Momo’s Stem-Cell Blog

Our First Day at Hangzhou: A Day of Tests (2/19/08)

February 21st, 2008

We woke up at 2 am the following morning without a lot of sleep. Apparently we had not yet adjusted to the jet lag. It was a nippy morning, with temperature in the high 30’s (Fahrenheit). Our room had a nice view of the Xiaoshan district with mid-rise rickety apartment housing on one side and fancy high-rise office complexes on the other, and a riverfront park and a mountain in the distance. Our room was comfortably equipped with a TV, a DVD player, a small refrigerator, a water purifier, and most unexpectedly, a 100 Mbps LAN Internet access. I guess the information age has finally caught up with the developing world!

I took a stroll through our floor, and saw the stem cell treatment facility, a physical therapy unit, the nurses’ station, a small kitchenette, and a “amusement room”, which is actually a game room with a large screen TV, comfortable sofas, two computer workstations, a play area for kids, and a place to host parties for patients. There was also twelve or so patient rooms with patients’ names on the door: one person from Australia, one from Italy, one from Romania, and the remaining 5-6 from the USA. Of course, everyone was asleep in that early hour, except the nurse on watch at the front desk. I introduced myself to the nurse, who was very nice and pleasant and spoke some limited English. She informed me that they needed to draw some blood from Momo and get urine and stool samples to run some tests for infectious diseases, as mandated by the Chinese government. As needle-phobic as Momo is, good luck with the IV!

The first time the nurse tried to draw blood, it was a disaster. It was hard to control or calm down Momo. After I spoke to him about why we need to do this and applying some lidocaine cream (a topical anesthetic we had brought from the US specifically for this purpose), with the help of three nurses, we were able to draw 10 cc of blood. The nurse asked us his weight and birthweight, and it took some mental arithmetic to convert pounds to kilograms. Apparently, the FPS metric system we use in the USA is not very popular in the rest of the world. The thermostat on our AC was calibrated from 10 to 30, and without a calculator, it takes a little while to figure out that 72 F is actually 22 C or so.

Just about when we were able to grab a quick breakfast of cookies and hot cocoa, Dr. Mike, the “head doctor” came in. I gave him Momo’s medical records and MRI on a CD – digitization has done wonders for carrying and sharing medical images. A group of doctors came in a short while later, which included Dr. Jack, Dr. Tony, Dr. Drew, and Dr. Mary, along with a couple of nurses and an interpreter Jerry. Dr. Jack is Momo’s attending physician. Dr. Mary, spoke good English as did Dr. Mike, but we talked to Dr. Jack through the interpretor. They did a physical exam, asked a series of questions, discussed among themselves (in Chinese), took notes, and left.

Next on tap was a therapy evaluation, which had to be juggled a couple of times to accommodate other patients. As Momo went with his mom to see James, the therapist at 11:00 am, Johnny came and took our lunch orders from a local restaurant, and asked me to accompany him for a tour to the local supermarket, RT Market, where we can get most of our daily necessities.

RT Market was a short five minute walk from the hospital. On our way there, we passed an old building with tall ornate architectural columns similar to the federal buildings in Washington DC. Johnny said that it was a government building owned by the Communist party. We also saw a McDonald and a KFC in the near vicinity, and Johnny indicated that there were some 200 KFC’s in the City of Hangzhou, and that they are always crowded. Colonel Sanders would be proud!

RT Market is a multi-storyed retail store, sort of like a scaled-down version of a Walmart Supercenter. The second floor sells groceries and the third floor has electronics, clothing, small appliances, detergents, and such. The entry is on the third floor and the exit is on the second floor. Hence, you have to go through the third floor to get to the second floor. The choices are somewhat limited. For instance, you won’t get all of the different kinds of cheddar, Romano, and Mozzarella cheese that you can get at a US grocery store, but you’ll get the basic American cheese singles, Philly cream cheese, and such. There were also some exotic items, such as live eels in a shallow tank. As crowded as the store was, it was interesting to see that the supermarket had several staffed weighing stalls throughout the store, where clerks weighed, priced, and bar-coded items that were sold by weight, such as fresh produce or unpackaged meat. This distribution of labor helped the crowded check-out counters move faster. Another thing that struck me was how small some of the package sizes were. For instance, the largest bag of Lay potato chips I could find were not the 12 or 16 oz that you can get in the USA, or even the standard 6 oz, but only 4.5 oz. Further, to our dismay, microwave-ready meals, which are standard in many busy American households, are not available here at all. Maybe the Chinese don’t like junk food or instant meals.

Our lunch was delivered to our room around 12 noon. Momo had fried rice with eggs, and we had fried noodles with pork and shrimp. The food looked greasy and unhealthy, but it was warm and a welcome respite from two days of bland airline food. All of our appointments for the day were over, and we were still so tired from the previous night, we spent the rest of the day sleeping, and then stayed awake for much of the night. I guess that it will take us a few more days to adjust to the 13-hour time difference.

Downtown Hangzhou from our hospital floor. RT Market is the second (5-storied) white building in the middle. In an interesting contrast, high-rises and agricultural land (the green swath in the foreground) coexist in the city – maybe it’s just a matter of time before all agricultural land is replaced with high-rises.

Rows of lower-end multi-colored apartment buildings behind our hospital

A street in Hangzhou. It looks just like that in any major US city. Notice the feeder lanes on both sides of the road, separated from the main road by medians. These lanes are used by two-wheelers, three-wheelers (mopeds customized with a cab in the rear), and bicycles – there are a lot of these on Chinese streets.

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