Tony on the drip.

After work, I went to the children's hospital in downtown Wuxi to see Tony. Tears came to my eyes, when I saw his head wrapped in tape and the drip attached to his forehead. My wife told me that four pins were used before one could stay in his forehead - an indication of how much Tony protested the treatment. So dehydrated was Tony that three drip bags were administered.

Tony is home at the time of this blog entry - Saturday evening. He is still not eating but he will drink a little. He would have been staying overnight at the hospital if my wife had been able to get a room. He will be staying a few nights starting tomorrow. The fewer the better is what I am hoping for. Tony injured his mouth a week ago tonight so it must heal soon.

The children's hospital is a dump. It is probably due to be torn down. The ward Tony was staying in till he had finished with the drip bag wasn't cleaned. It wouldn't have surprised if I was to see used diapers thrown under one of the beds. The Chinese attitude to public cleanliness is that someone will eventually come around to clean the mess so no need to take personal responsibility to keeping a place clean. The bathroom was so beyond the pale that it behoves me to try and describe it without using foul language, so I won't describe it at all.

Near the children's hospital is an empty lot. An empty lot serves a purpose in a crowded Chinese city: garbage dump. How it is that it doesn't seem to bother anyone Wuxinese is beyond me.


The Chinese system is user-pay. It couldn't be otherwise. China doesn't have the resources to provide free medical care to 1.3 billion people. And the government would be nothing but incompetent if it tried, for as a student told me "When the government ran the restaurants, there weren't any restaurants, how can we expect them to run hospitals?" Still, the government must be running some sort of crony-capitalist system however which gives you the worst of cronyism combined with the worst of government organizing.