After the eye bag lift in Beijing. "The operation was not as successful as I had hoped and it cost too much. There is an indent under my left eye that is a bit odd."

Chapter Three: First procedure in China
The next day I received an email from Dr. Li, telling me she would do the operation later. Tentatively, I agreed. Three months passed. As the long summer holidays loomed I decided to go ahead with the proposed operation. When I called to book the appointment in late June, however, things had changed.
    "You must come one day ahead for a pre-consultation," said a new nurse. "We take blood, x-ray, EKG, stuff like that." Was this their new protocol; had someone died under the knife? I agreed to everything. Oddly, the price had been lowered too – from 15,000RMB to eight.
    Booking my train I narrowly missed the onslaught of summer students traveling en masse. Upon arrival the next morning a taxi took me the hospital, a gleaming building tucked into the sleek Chao Yang District. The glass doors shone; the floors gleamed; the too bright smile of the token tall and blonde receptionist all reassured me that everything was as spic and span as a hospital in the USA. My armpits smelled, my tennis shoes needed to be scrubbed and my hair was a wreck from one sleepless night on a Chinese train.
    The staff politely directed me upstairs to Dr. Li's area. Her new nurse, a stout forty something Chinese woman wearing a spiffy blue medical pantsuit and nametag saying "Maggie", greeted me and told me to have a seat. Just like in an American medical establishment I plopped down onto an expensive couch near a magazine rack and waited an hour over my appointment time. Foreign ladies, many very pregnant, waddled past me on their way to Maternity. Curvy French girls with ponytails and extra low cut jeans sauntered by, chatting to each other about shoe shopping. An attractive black woman with her hair corn rowed and beaded sat next to me and read a German magazine. A maternal Finnish woman sat next to me and hugged her three-year-old girl as she sang softly to her child in her lilting language. Two blonde, round rumped, acne marked American doctors, stethoscopes bumping against their plump chests, headed roly-poly fashion toward the elevators at a leisurely pace. "Fat cats in the Orient," I muttered to myself, leafing through a glossy magazine. Finally, the nurse waggled her fingers for me to follow her into the doctor's office.
    "Do I remember you?" said the doctor, frowning behind her desk. "What do you want me to do?"
   "You will erase the line between my eyebrows?" I asked.
    "No, that is big operation- 56,000. I do for you little one, only eight. Fix your eyes, make you look younger. Next time big operation, when you have more time. Any questions?"
In retrospect it was a mistake on my part. I thought doctors were like gods and I figured a little imprvement would be better than nothing at all.
I remember looking at my fingers. I was stunned. "Doctor, when will you do this? And do I sleep here or in a hotel?" I asked.
    "Very cheap; no hospital costs. We give you stuff to make you sleep. This guy next to me, Dr. Wang, he will give you the drug." The doctor, a youngish round-faced Chinese, looked up at me sheepishly, and nodded, and then quickly studied his chart.
    "Allergic to anything?" he asked me softly.
    "No," I replied.
And that was it. The nurse led me out of the office; I heard some loud bickering in Chinese as I exited, but decided to ignore it, and followed the nurse to a small room like a lamb led to the slaughter. She took my blood, my blood pressure and did an EKG. I asked her not to do the chest x-ray as I'd had one recently and she agreed.
    "What about money?" I asked her.
    "Pay tomorrow, before the operation," she said.
The following day I showed up for my procedure, scrubbed, nervous and eager. Dr. Li's cranky nurse led me to a rather plush private room and told me to strip entirely. "Why are we in this room?" I asked. "Because you have Hepatitis C; it is infectious," she replied.
    "That's impossible!" I screeched. "Are you sure?"
    She left the room and came back a few minutes later. "You're right. No hepatitis. It's because the other room is full. I mixed you up with another patient." Calmly, she handed me some paper panties and told me to put them on under my hospital gown.
    A few minutes later a plump, cheerful surgical nurse took over; she escorted me into the operating theater. It was small, bright and gleaming as the rest of the hospital. Then Dr. Wang entered; sheepishly he injected some anesthesia into my saline drip bag. Curious, I asked him how he decided to do it. "I can make you sleep in fifteen seconds if I want," he said, grinning diabolically, "But in this case you have sixty seconds." As he spoke Dr. Li came in, flexing her fingers and merrily joking with the nurses. She nodded at me like a chef about to carve up a hen. Cracking her fingers she glanced at Dr. Wang; as I watched them both I felt myself slipping into oblivion.
    The operation took almost five hours, with me unconscious the entire time. I woke in the same room I'd undressed in, with the same cranky nurse but now she looked both tired and impatient; obviously she wanted me to dress and get moving. The drug had worn off; I had no headache, no hang over, no problem with balance. The nurse impatiently led me downstairs, and I sat in the reception area, ostensibly waiting for a friend to come and escort me home. The girlfriend, a pompous, obese Dutch girl, never showed up so after twenty minutes I simply snuck out alone, against the regulations. "You cannot leave without an escort," the nurse had said severely and then disappeared. I wandered into a taxi and zoomed off to my pre-booked hotel where I rested for five days. The sixth day I returned promptly to the hospital, as ordered, to see the doctor and have the stitches removed. Everyone ignored me after I checked in. Again I waited more than an hour to see Dr. Li, until an unsmiling nurse jerked her head for me to enter the doctor's office.
    "Why are you here?" Dr. Li muttered. "I never remove the stitches until the sixth or seventh day."
I stared at her; her nurse was the one who had told me to come today. "Your nurse made the appointment," I said meekly.
    "Okay, I take them out for you, she replied, glowering. Fussily and with little caution to my tender skin she snipped the tiny stitches, sixteen on each side. Then she swabbed the area with antibiotic ointment, taped it up, and said, "Okay, you can go now." She turned away and said in Chinese to the nurse, "Okay, bring in the next one."
    "What about instructions?" I started to ask. "When can I wash my face, swim, etc?" But the doctor was in a foul mood; she started to revile her nurse in Chinese; I caught something about being over booked, too much to do. The nurse took me by the elbow and led me out into the hall.
    "Goodbye," she said, coldly. "Have a nice trip home. Call us if you when you want more surgery on your face."
    "Right," I thought, dreading the process of trying to get a ticket and then sit on the train again. "Good bye," I said, but the nurse had already disappeared.

CHAPTER 1: West meets East
CHAPTER 2: American and Chinese approaches to surgery
CHAPTER 4: Second procedure in China
CHAPTER 5: The end result

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