The Aftermath

After making it home from my terrible trail of tears at the Beijing United Family Hospital. I was relegated to spending a full calender week on the couch without getting up for anything but food delivery and the bathroom. There were: no showers, laughs, jumping jacks, or smiles in my week of the unforgiven. Grizzly Adams had better hygiene than me by Sunday. Upon transitioning from the powerful pain-medication at the hospital to the less-powered pills from the pharmacy I developed a fever that kept me awake all day and all night. Not once did I sleep for more than two hours, and feeling like an insomniac is no way to live. Nevertheless, I kept myself entertained with a wide collection of DVDs, and ESPN Asia's live coverage of the baseball playoffs. Since I had to keep my leg pretty much permanently iced, I had to take the entire week off of school, and at the most I ate two meals a day.

Although this was hell on Earth, in some ways it is a positive experience. If you can go through a knife-fight with a surgeon in the Orient without your close friends and family around, you can handle a lot when it comes to living/working overseas. By looking at the light at the end of the tunnel I made it through this dead week, and now the days have been getting better every day. Last week was great, as I got to see all of my friends at school and I finally felt alive again. That is until I got served again this Monday. Here is my story of more tough times in the life of Matthew S. Atkinson

9/20/08

a. I took a taxi at 5:00 PM for my doctor's appointment with the only orthopedic surgeon in this city who I trust, and who happens to only work at the hospital on Monday. My taxi driver almost crashed several times (nothing new), and drove into a random lot where he mistakenly drove down a storage ramp to a basement floor of a grocery store. My fragile knee bumped against the door and seat in front several times due to the miserable driving of a man who never should set foot in car, unless it is the back of a police cruiser. After a few more random twists and turns the taxi driver tried to drop me off at the wrong hospital in the wrong side of town (I gave him a card with name & address, and showed it to him several times as it looked that we were going the wrong way) to my dismay. After a very heated argument (hypothetically, I may have thrown a few good-old American curse words in his face) we parted ways. I was going to stiff him, but since I am not very mobile I had no choice but to pay a taxi for being dropped off in the ass end of nowhere. By the time the dust cleared it was 6:20.

b. A do-gooder expat heard the commotion and vowed to flag me down a taxi. This guy was quite the saint since getting a taxi in rush hour traffic here in Beijing is sometimes almost impossible. A few minutes later he had a taxi for me and all I had to do was climb over a two-foot wall and I'd be on my way. As the fellow Yankee helped me over the wall a well-dressed Chinese woman ran out to the taxi and raced into the passenger seat. She had been standing next to me as my taxi was being waved down, so she definitely knew what I was a cripple who needed some help. The expat who spoke fluent Chinese explained her the situation as the taxi stalled and waiter for us, that I was late for my doctor's appointment and that this was an urgent matter. Nevertheless, the woman heard us out and told the taxi to go anyways. I am leaving this other taxi driver out of this who is also a son of a bitch, but not nearly as bad as the rest of those in the story.

c. I finally made it to the doctor's appointment thirty minutes late. It took me another twenty minutes to find a taxi, but we made short time and were there by 7:00. My doctor said to just sit back and relax as he was just going to fix my bandages and "take a look". I was looking forward to just getting on with my day, as there seemed to be not much on the agenda. The next thing I know there a collection of knives and other horrible metal devices last seen in the movie "Hostel" are for some reason laying right beside my leg. Soon thereafter blood is gushing from my leg like a fire hydrant. The doc just so happened to "forget" to tell me that he would be ripping out a piece of metal the size and shape of a fish hook that had previously been sealing my wound. As I howled in pain the doctor was unfazed, and his ceaseless ripping and pulling with strange painful devices lasted for another ten minutes of pure hell. After getting another slashing, the doctor then pushed and pulled my leg in ungodly directions until I was on the verge of throwing up.

So who is worse?
A. The taxi driver who drove me to hell, collected money he knew he didn't deserve, and made so many wrong turns that my knee was swollen by the time I made it to the hospital.

B. The unethical Chinese vixen (bitch) who knew exactly how dire my situation was, but still stole my rush-hour taxi without batting an eye-lash.

C. Or the doctor who gave me no inkling that today's appointment would be so incredibly painful that I actually screamed in pain. The embarrassment of coming out the door and having every single person in the hospital stare at me as if I was the exorcist was not the most pleasant feeling in the world.

From the Orient with no love,

Atkinson