Medical Form Marathon

To go to Xinjiang next year I had to get some medical forms filled out just like I had to do two years ago before I came to China for the first time. I though it would be easier this time around. The forms were mostly in Chinese after all and they were issued by the Chinese government so it shouldn't be any problem to get them done in China. I was very wrong. Teddy first thought it wouldn't even be possible to get them done in Changzhou and suggested I go to Shanghai, the problem with this though is that it would cost a huge amount more money to get these relatively simple forms filled out in Shanghai. It isn't really Teddy's job anymore to help me with this stuff anyways and he was busy. I turned to Luca who has taken over Teddy's old job for some help. Luca eventually called one hospital who thought they could do the tests I needed but he said he was too busy, though I'm not exactly sure with what, to take me. Steve generously offered to accompany me to the hospital located in downtown Changzhou. When we got there they informed us that we were at the wrong place and we should go to the special hospital for foreigners in the North of the city. This is the place I initially thought would do it but Teddy had seemed adamant they couldn't get it done.

We took another taxi over there and after looking over the form the woman said they could fill it out but that they couldn't do any of the tests that day because they only did them in the morning. Steve agreed to come back with me another day to get all the tests done. The tests themselves were relatively simple just the usual doctors poking and prodding, with maybe the one exception of an odd test where I was supposed to smell some liquid in a jar and describe it, a test made much harder by the language barrier, also I'm not sure they were happy with the, "I don't know it smells like medicine," answer. With these tests done though I had to wait another week for the results to come in. Steve heroically agreed to come with me one last time. The real trick here was that I needed them to fill out my forms not just give me one of theirs. Steve had to debate and argue with them quite a bit but they eventually agreed to fill out the form I had, they even made two copies, since I'm not going through all that again. In the end it took weeks to accomplish what should have been done in days and I got a good lesson in the great Chinese run around.