Today we began our “clinical practice” at Anzhen Hospital. This place mainly specializes in cardiovascular medicine but is also a full service hospital. We all gathered in a large meeting room on the 11th floor. There we saw several portraits of previous UT-Houston delegations to the hospital. In fact we saw a picture from 1985. They were number one. We are number twenty. After the intro, we visited the pediatric floor of the hospital. I took a picture with a really cute kid with her dad. While in each room, crowds gathered at the door. It was like the Chinese patients and families had never seen American’s before. Even the staff got all excited. The nurses giggled like schoolgirls. It was quite the spectacle. Remember this word spectacle. I think it might appear a few more times before this is all over. Then we visited their cath lab, which is like any cath lab we have in America.
Because the hospital is so far away from the Capital (with interesting/incorrect spelling “Capitol”) University of Medical Sciences (our home), we had lunch out. After being seated in a private room, we got the cold dishes. I’m sure I will see many of these as the days progress, but there were things like duck’s feet (the webbing mind you), pickled egg, plant roots, and all sorts of stuff. I sampled most of them (including the duck foot) just to say I did. We don’t eat any kind of pork in China, because a disease called cysticercosis is endemic here. Basically parasitic worms form spores which won’t die even under cooking conditions. Once you eat them, they go to your brain and put up shop. It probably would be rare for us to get the disease, but we have no intention of tempting fate. We eat everything else.
Then we returned to the hospital for a talk on the epidemiology of common diseases. The Chinese are beginning to experience hypertension, diabetes, and heart disease due to several things (most notably smoking, high salt diets, McDonalds and KFC moving in, and others). They are beginning to have diseases of the West. Look out China, here we come. Then we talked about America. We talked about the cost of medical school, our enormous debt, and a bunch of other stuff. It was a pretty cool conversation. Then we went home.
Dinner was incredible again. Oh my goodness it was good. Then Byron and I played ping-pong and drank six bottles of beer (in addition to the several we had a dinner). We also played ping-pong with Theresa, Erich from Buffalo and Tony. I didn’t lose a game.
Because the hospital is so far away from the Capital (with interesting/incorrect spelling “Capitol”) University of Medical Sciences (our home), we had lunch out. After being seated in a private room, we got the cold dishes. I’m sure I will see many of these as the days progress, but there were things like duck’s feet (the webbing mind you), pickled egg, plant roots, and all sorts of stuff. I sampled most of them (including the duck foot) just to say I did. We don’t eat any kind of pork in China, because a disease called cysticercosis is endemic here. Basically parasitic worms form spores which won’t die even under cooking conditions. Once you eat them, they go to your brain and put up shop. It probably would be rare for us to get the disease, but we have no intention of tempting fate. We eat everything else.
Then we returned to the hospital for a talk on the epidemiology of common diseases. The Chinese are beginning to experience hypertension, diabetes, and heart disease due to several things (most notably smoking, high salt diets, McDonalds and KFC moving in, and others). They are beginning to have diseases of the West. Look out China, here we come. Then we talked about America. We talked about the cost of medical school, our enormous debt, and a bunch of other stuff. It was a pretty cool conversation. Then we went home.
Dinner was incredible again. Oh my goodness it was good. Then Byron and I played ping-pong and drank six bottles of beer (in addition to the several we had a dinner). We also played ping-pong with Theresa, Erich from Buffalo and Tony. I didn’t lose a game.
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