Sometimes you have a kick ass day; sometimes you have an ass kicking
day. That's all I could think of at 9 pm Thursday night as I started
scooping toilet waste water from the flooded small balcony outside of my
kitchen and carrying it by the bucketful to my bathroom toilet. It was
not poetic nor particularly clever but that's about all I could come up
with after a really rough day.
This story is written
three days after the fact, one, because I had no time on Thursday, and
two, I guess the story is better told with some time and distance (for
example, I've now convinced myself it wasn't so bad).
My
Thursday started off at 4:20 am or so in the morning after Jovie, our
helper, fainted in the bathroom and came into my bedroom crying out that
she felt really weak and nearly collapsed in a heap by my side of the
bed. She sat on the floor, her face leached of all color, crying as she realized that she had hit the back of her head and was bleeding. I think she was in shock.
That is a very daunting way to wake up, let me tell you. We called for the ambulance, and it wasn't long before 3 EMTs showed up at our door. Michael stayed
behind to feed Lola and put her back to sleep. As I launched myself
into the back of the ambulance, I realized that I hadn't been in one since eighth grade, when I had been bitten by a dog. So I
guess there's that to be grateful for, at least - my rides in ambulances
are to date few and far in between! In the inky blur of early morning, everything seemed so surreal to me as we proceeded
to Queen Mary hospital at what felt like a snail's pace.
I left the hospital
emergency room around 7:30 am while Jovie was getting stitches, to run
home to pack her a bag of clothes. The doctors told me she would have
to stay for further observation, a standard procedure whenever anyone
has syncope (faints). At home, I stayed up with Michael to watch Lola
until our nanny showed up. Then I headed back to the hospital to check
in on Jovie, make sure everything was okay, and then returned home to
shower and get ready for work. The hospital ward was insanity - just a
dizzying gray maze of hallways with electronic doors that swung open
into rooms full of hospital beds stacked side by side, row after row.
That was a lot to have happened before 9:30 am. I also immediately arranged for our nanny to stay for longer and to also come on Saturday, her day off.
At
work I had a big client pitch in the afternoon that I had been working
on for a while and had a lot to prepare for - it was hard to look and
feel pulled together when I was feeling pretty wrecked and anything
but. I also got on a call for a separate matter that confirmed that I
would be heading to Tokyo next week. Thankfully, the client pitch went
better than I expected.
Rushing home to relieve the
nanny, I kept checking in on Jovie to see what was happening. She
didn't leave the hospital until after 6 pm that evening - and when she
came home, it was without any diagnosis or explanation. I was rather
peeved at the hospital for sending her home like that - I like answers!
She had gone to the hospital with nothing but her phone and octopus
card and then had the change of clothes that I provided her, so I had to
arrange to meet her exactly as her taxi pulled up in order to pay the
driver's fare.
Finally, after getting Lola settled and
having a quiet dinner (it was without a doubt a takeout night!), *that* was
when our bathroom pipes decided to explode and flood our balcony. We
have been having crazy rain and thunderstorms here the past couple of
weeks, so I don't know if it had anything to do with that but it was a
truly massive amount of water gushing out of the gutter. That resulted
in frantic calls to our building management and multiple trips well past
10:30pm from the maintenance men trying to figure out how to stop the
water from seeping into our kitchen.
Sigh. Having typed all that out, I guess it's clear why I felt so exhausted on Friday after all!
One
note about the hospital experience - Queen Mary is a public hospital
(in the U.S., all hospitals are public). I think Michael has gone to a
public hospital to get some stitches or blood drawn, but this was
the first public hospital I've set foot in in Hong Kong. I have avoided
them thus far because the wait is so long (probably 2-3
hours at a minimum depending on the time of day), and we have insurance
coverage so I don't mind paying the premium to forego the wait. That
said, I have no doubt that the doctors and nurses in the public
hospitals are first rate - the sheer number of cases, variety, and speed
and efficiency with which they have to work give me a lot of confidence
in their abilities. They may be a bit bureaucratic, and it's easier to
get around with Cantonese, but you can definitely make do with
English.
The public hospital experience in Hong Kong is
eye-opening. Like any hospital around the world, the emergency room is a
never ending stream of people flooding in and out, stretchers loading
and unloading, and lots of people sitting and waiting. But the cost for
someone with a Hong Kong ID is HK$180 (that's approximately US$23), and
you can pay for your hospital visit with a tap of your Octopus card.
Yes, for $23, this covered the following for Jovie's visit: the
ambulance ride to the hospital; in the emergency room: check-in,
registration, being checked by a physician, local anesthesia and
stitches, and a CT scan; and in the general hospital ward: a half a
day's stay, multiple checks of vitals, a blood test, meals and constant
monitoring by nurses and physicians in the ward. The only other charge
was a HK$120 payment for some medication upon being discharged. That's
pretty incredible, no?
Last weekend, I had the pleasure of attending a grand
opening for a medical building in Central, consisting of nearly 20 floors, each
of which host a different specialty.
It’s the largest such private medical center of its kind in Hong Kong to
date. I represented a group of doctors
who invested in the private medical practice, and it was pretty stunning to see
it all come to fruition nearly a year and a half later (from inception to
completion). 
The first course was burrata
cheese that had been flown in from Puglia that morning, followed by a pear
ravioli with pistachio and parmesan, followed by a chick pea and pomegranate
pumpkin curry, followed by a very dense, flourless chocolate tart. 
