A Visit to the ER in China

The night before last, I experienced something that I hoped never to experience in my life. I visited a hospital in China. I've never had to visit a hospital before in my life even in the US, so to say I was unprepared for what I experienced is an understatement. 

I am currently in China on business and I'll be honest and say that I drink very little liquids while I am here. I spend most of my days in factories and the bathroom facilities aren't the greatest, so I try to avoid them. Last night, as I was leaving the factory for the night, I noticed an extremely sharp pain in my left side. I thought it was most likely some kind of cramp and all I needed was to make it to a bathroom back at the hotel, but after almost two hours, the pain was not subsiding and it became absolutely excruciating to the point where it was making me physically ill. A bit of Googling and discussing with a coworker told me that I most likely had a kidney stone. 

In general, I don't take medication ever aside from the occasional Ibuprofen. Even if I'm sick with a cold, I rarely take anything for it and just prefer to wait it out. In this case, I was hoping I could do the same, but after two hours of excruciating pain, I couldn't wait any longer. I got on the phone with International SOS, which is a service that my company thankfully provides to employees abroad who have medical emergencies. Unfortunately, the process was terribly slow, and, although I had a very nice doctor to talk to, after telling her my symptoms and where I was, it took the service over 30 minutes to decide what hospital would be best. Ideally, I wanted to go to a Westernized hospital with doctors who spoke English, but that was a completely false hope. I honestly had a vision of myself in a white bed in a room by myself with an IV waiting out this kidney stone thing. Boy was I wrong...

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