Body Check

September 9, 2009

There is no ice hockey here (what a surprise!) but I did have a "body check" yesterday. That's what Yvonne, one of the law school office staff, kept calling my health examination. In order to finalize my work permit visa, and hence to get paid, I had to get the standard health check-up required of all foreigners who want some sort of permanent/semi-permanent residence. Chinese who have been abroad for more than three months also have to get the checks. It's a fascinating idea. The exams are meant to help control disease and encourage healthiness, but in a country this large and with this many people and with many, many people coming and going across international borders, it seems a futile attempt at control and governance.

Yvonne took me about half an hour by car to a hospital specially designated to do such checks for foreigners, but first we stopped at a small photo shop to get my picture taken. Small passport sized photos are required for all sorts of documents, including the body check. I filled out a form with my name, passport number, and checked no to all sorts of diseases: tuberculosis, psychosis, diarrhea in the past week, cough, cold, sniffles, surgery, pregnancy, tumors, HIV, heart disease, and on and on. The registration nurse stamped my form, webcammed my face, scanned my right thumb, and pasted a bar code on my form and a small cup. Then, the fun began.

I, and the hundreds of others like me at the hospital yesterday, went to nine different stations and got some part of our bodies checked. It was all remarkably efficient despite the masses. First, the most competent phlebotomist I have ever encountered drew my blood into two vials. I hardly felt the needle prick. Second, a doctor barked at me to take off my shoes and stand on a cool machine that measured height and weight remotely. Third and fourth, a diffident doctor swabbed my throat, pulled on my ears and peered in, and stuck a little plastic tool, newly removed from its package, up my nostrils, right after another doctor let me keep on my glasses for the eye exam. Fifth, the ultrasound doctor ran a wand over my abdomen and pronounced me okay - no tumors today. Sixth, a technician took a chest xray or at least it seemed like he did. There is some debate among my colleagues about whether that part of the check is real. Seventh, a harried doctor made me lie down and pull up my shirt for an EKG. Higher, she said, higher. Yikes. She stapled the EKG print out to my form. Eighth, in a ladies' room with only Chinese toilets, I peed in the bar coded cup and left it on a cart in the hallway along with tens of other samples. Ninth, a dentist took a quick look inside my mouth in a room that smelled like every other dentist's office I've ever been in. Somewhere along the line, someone took my temperature as well.

In seven work days, I'll learn if I passed the body check. Then I get to go to the police station for an interview.

The following "Body Check Plus" is not for the faint of heart. If you are sqeamish or embarassable or shy or work with me professionally, please stop here.

I have never given a urine sample on a Chinese toilet before. Please google Chinese toilet or porcelain hole in the ground. Hence, I peed all over my hand. There was no toilet paper. The sinks had upside down buckets in them with signs - and exclamation points. I don't know what the signs said, but I got the message when I turned the faucets and no water came out. I eyed the sink longingly in the dentist's office. I was finally able to rinse my hand off over a garbage can by the water cooler in the reception area while Yvonne and I waited for another colleague to finish his body check. I didn't explain to her what I was doing. She didn't ask.