| JOURNAL FOR 09/22/00 | |
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| (09/22/00)
Jim: I talked her out of it. The stroller's adequate for here, but we're going to have enough baggage problems coming home (especially including Meredith and her stuff) to make that impossible to get on the plane. Susan: Using Yuan is more confusing than you'd think, at least for me. Jim is better/quicker than I am with it. I made up a "cheat sheet" with a table converting Yuan to US dollars. It's a pretty crude estimate, but it allows you to "ballpark" it. Also, the language barrier makes it difficult. I sometimes have trouble with a thick Irish or Scottish accent, let alone a Chinese one, and the people who are totally without English communicated by punching in numbers on a calculator or writing it on a piece of paper. If they write the numbers out, they have a slightly different way of writting them. Nines look like p's and 5's look like triangles. It can be very confusing. My conversion table is as follows: 1 yuan = $0.12 The medical exam is pretty cursory; height, weight and general body check (have all your limbs, etc.). Though there is a sign warning people that there will be a full body search, including the genital area. Since only one parent is necessary, I took Meredith while Jim stayed home to work on the Journal/Website. Meredith weighs 17.32 pounds and is just over 70 cm (27 inches long), which is exactly the stats on her updated medical report in early August. I was a little suspect of the updated stats in August because the Master family received the exact same height and weight as Meredith. In any case, Meredith, the youngest of the China Seas babies was nearly the largest baby in our group. One of the other babies (at 13 months) was 17.36 pounds and 72 cm long. She's a chunk. When it came for the body check, the doctors were very concerned about Meredith's boil and suggested that we take her to the hospital and have it checked out. Shasha helped me explain that we thought that the boil was from an infection surrounding an immunization site and that we would be taking her to the clinic at the White Swan. Throughout the entire exam Meredith was a real trouper and kept grabbing the stethiscope to look at. The doctors were teasing that Meredith wanted to be a doctor. She had lots of smiles for them. Also, during a slow time, the doctor asked me, rather curiously why Americans dress the babies in one piece outfits that are hard to get on and off for diaper changes? I said, I don't know, that 's what are in the stores. She looked puzzled and went on. Because Meredith barfed all over the first outfit that I had her in (that was easy to get on and off), I put her in a one piece short outfit with no leg snaps. So we had to completely disrobe her to take her diaper off. After a short walk back, I went back to the room to get Jim. Jim: We decided that between her congestion, the boil and constipation (she hadn't done anything since we'd gotten her), we were going to take Meredith to the hotel's clinic. Susan: We entered the clinic and explained to the nurse, (Note: Most of the other babies haven't either. I'm not too concerned yet. It doesn't seem to bother her.) He gave her a brief exam consisting of listening to her lungs and looking at her butt/hip. The nurse translated his diagnosis; Meredith has bronchitis and an infection in the boil. He would give us medicine. He gave us 1 package of "baby tea" (see the box above) and 3 containers of medicine that were repackaged in 3 small unlabeled plastic vials with lines marked off on the outside of the bottle. The instructions say to "give one line three times a day". The 3 vials contain Benadryl (left), Antibiotics (center), and decongestant - which was some kind of "Chinese medicine" (right). I was highly skeptical about the unlabeled bottles and the rather "interesting" use directions. So I asked what kind of antibiotics they were. The nurse showed me the original bottle; it read Velosef. Not one of the antibiotics that I recognized. We could look it up on the Internet later. They also put some sort of black tarry stuff on the boil and taped a gauze bandage over the whole thing. I've seen similar over the counter stuff in the US for drawing out the boil. They said to come back tomorrow so that they could look at it. The "baby tea" is something that Meredith is been having at the orphanage and really likes. The box has some English descriptions:
I'm really skeptical about the medications. The tea doesn't bother me too much, though I'd like to know more about it. I'm not going to give her the Benadryl or the decongestant. I also suspect that the translation of the bronchitis diagnosis may not mean the same thing that I think it is. Her congestion is slight and definitely worth keeping an eye on, but it just doesn't seem to be bothering her. She sleeps through the night and is a fairly happy baby. So unless things get worse, I'm not using it. I'm not throwing it out either. Jim looked up the antibiotic and from what he found out, it's not unreasonable. Though I'd like to talk to Dr. Moriarty first. At this point it is the middle of the night in the US so we'll wait until late tonight and call then. I got through immediately to the nurse and gave her a quick run down. Dr. Moriarty wasn't in yet, but Dr. Holiday was and the nurse consulted with him. He said that the antibiotic was not out of line. So we gave her a dose immediately and put her to sleep. A note about her sleeping: A friend in Chicago emailed us and was concerned that we were putting Meredith to sleep on her back. He wanted us to know that babies who sleep on their stomachs are more prone to SIDS. We knew that. Meredith, however doesn't care and will roll over and sleep either on her side or stomach. Susan: Otherwise, we took it pretty easy today, and hung around the room and hotel. We didn't want to do too much and tire Meredith out too much. Jim spent a fair amount of time on the computer to get the Journal and travelogue updated and send email. I didn't get a chance to do anything on the computer because Meredith decided to wake up early. I can read email with her on my lap, but I can't type. There is a mirror over the desk and she likes to look at herself. We took her to Lucy's (a local restuarant) for dinner. Lucy's decor and music is 1970's USA. Meredith had a ball. She really liked the congee there (more tasty than the White Swan's version)and really liked the music. You should see her dance to ABBA (or anything with a good beat). She also got ahold of her spoon and tried to feed herself. The only other "exciting" that we did today is to make another run to 7-11 for bottled water and drop off some laundry at the White Swan's laundy service. We get a better rate that if the maids take the laundry, but it's still expensive. Between Meredith being messy (and getting us messy) and the heat, we are going through a lot of clothes. 4 days worth of laundry for the 3 of us was almost 300 yuan. Miscellaneous Notes about China Jim: There is a 7-11 here, and stocked with the Chinese equivalent of what you'd find in America in one such. One thing I haven't stressed is that the water you would find in a hotel's tap is not drinkable. Period. Washing your body with, sure. Brushing your teeth with, nope. You end up having to buy water, pop, etc. all the time, and some of the things you wouldn't think twice about (sticking your toothbrush under the tap) are no-nos. We used the hotpot and refrigerator (for keeping things cold) a lot; the hotpot water, boiled, was what we used daily for sanitizing things like baby bottles, toothbrushes, that sort of thing. I would trust the ice in a really high-end hotel in drinks. And the same with fresh fruits, which are loaded up on the buffets and such. More on food below. You will also find that the sort of things that are common in drug stores are harder to find - bacitracin ointment was something we left behind and found really hard to dig up here. On the other hand, they sell heavy-duty antibiotics over the counter here in the White Swan. If you have a real desire for a snack food, there's plenty here, but it may not be what you're looking for. Fancy chocolate and nuts and dried fruit are easy to come by, as is yogurt. And for some reason, Ritz crackers are everywhere. Coke, Pepsi, Sprite - no problem including Diet versions. In regard to food in general, the White Swan's food is very very good, and their buffets are excellent, but they are not cheap. We blew 600 yuan on lunch one day at their buffet, and that's pretty pricey. The dim sum at their Cantonese Restaurant is out of this world. Susan: Telephone communication is pretty good here. We brought a MCI World Prepaid phone card with us. We bought it at Cosco and can recharge it at a rate of 5.6 cents per unit. We charged it to a Maximum of 1000 units. We called home and talked to both Grandmas and Aunties on "Gotcha" day. Since then we have called Jim's mom every couple of days (since email communication is trickier) with her. Also, Jim is worried about her and wants to check in. I've called my mom once besides. A call from China is 9 units per minute so it eats the units pretty fast. We depleated the 1000 units already. They do not allow you to recharge the card while you are in a foreign country, so we emailed my mom the information and she recharged it for us. We have another 1000 minutes. The MCI card is sort of tricky to use and the directions are not very clear. Neither are the voice instructions when you call in. Basically what you do is to dial the access code from China (9-10812 the nine is to get out of the hotel's phone system). They then ask for a PIN number. This is where things get confusing. If you are calling from a foreign country, you first use 100 as a PIN number (They tell you this in the fine print on the card. There is a muh more obvious PIN number for domestic calls and the second PIN for international calls). Then dial the main PIN number and the operator will ask you to dial your phone number starting with 1- AREA CODE - Number. Sometimes the clarity is not great, but for the most part, we've had good luck. We have a prepaid sprint card that we use at home, but forgot to bring it with. Sprint charges 8 cents per unit. I don't know how many units per minute are charged for a call frm china. We forgot the card at home, so we don't know how well this one works. For domestic calls, the sprint card is easier to work with. Jim: When we came to China, we used one of those 'free for 500 hours' AOL accounts, since they hd an access number here. However, every time you called, we found out, we got charged a $6 surcharge! So I dumped that and got a 'Swan Net' connectin here at the Hotel. Susan: It costs about $12 per day, but we could easily run up that in the AOL charges. We've also offered the use of our laptop and internet connection to our fellow travelers. So far, Joyce Anne and Mary have used it to send email and Jim helped them put up a "slide show" of digital pictures of both Grace Anne and Maria. Barbara's nephew also used it to check his AOL account. It's much cheaper than using the Business center and we have unlimited access. |
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Susan: Today is the trip to the medical appointment for Meredith's visa. We are trying a stroller for the first time today. Velcro Baby (wants me to hold her and play with her during all of her waking hours) is heavy. We didn't buy a stroller or bring one with, so we rented one from the White Swan. There is a 100 yuan deposit and a rental fee of 1 yuan per day. One yuan is approximately 12 cents. The stroller is your basic, no frills Kolcraft umbrella stroller. They also have a variety of strollers available in one of the gift shops in the White Swan. The brand name (I think) is Angel. One of the strollers has very long handles for tall people. That one is approximately $30. It's a tempting buy.
who translated for the doctor, that Meredith has some chest congestion and a large boil on her butt/hip. Also, she hasn't had a bowl movement in the entire time we've had her.