Nurses from the clinic in Inner Mongolia PRC

January 2007 after both operations in China

"The face lifts are great - people say I look 35-40."

Chapter Five: The end result
I woke, laying on a steel gurney and conscious of several people above me, talking loudly while they pushed me into the recovery room. Dazed, it seemed like a game when all five nurses grabbed the bed sheet under my body and flipped me onto the hospital bed. "You look better already!" commanded the head Nurse. "Any pain?"
    "Not yet," I replied.
    "You must eat. Eat a lot to recover quickly, build face into beautiful position," she admonished me in Chinese. "Are you hungry?"
    "Not yet," I replied, turning to look at the person in the adjoining bed. It was a large man, with his face wrapped in ACE bandages like me. He sprawled on the bed in loose jockey shorts and moaned. After a few minutes of groaning the man called for a bedpan; I turned my head away quickly. His wife, a small woman in an expensive twin set, smiled at me tentatively.
    "He is a big shot car dealer here in town," said one of the young nurses, patting my exposed face with a cool cloth. His operation cost five thousand more than yours, because he had his eyes done, too." She pulled at her eyelids, to demonstrate.
    "So much for privacy," I thought, and closed my eyes to sleep.
    The next four days and nights I spent at the clinic under the care and supervision of the head nurse and her band of junior nurses. They considered me a "special case" because I had no family or relatives who could temporally move in with me at the clinic to care for my needs. So, for an extra 20RMB per day (about $ 2.50USD) they all cared for me. I refused to use the bedpan in front of my moaning bed partner; eventually the nurses let me get up and hobble with them to the operating theater bathroom. Everyone pushed food at me several times a day, ranging from sweet rolls bought out on the street, to bowls of tomato and egg soup, strips of dried Mongolian beef, bags of heated milk and rice with sautéed vegetables. I had no heart to eat, to the great shock of all the nurses. For them food represents health, energy, and a renewal of normalcy.
    The nurses rarely left my side, even when they cautiously transferred me down to the basement the second day to free up the recovery beds for more patients; apparently the doctor delayed his urgent trip to the south. Downstairs, a steady stream of hospital staff visited me, ranging from the doctor's four year old grandchild, who zipped in on a new red scooter to present me with a bag of heated milk, to the night security man, a wizened face grandfather with no teeth. He always showed up at six, anxiously asked what I had eaten, disappeared momentarily, only to reappear with half of his dinner rations in a chipped porcelain bowl for me. Young nurses, two at a time, took turns sleeping in an adjacent bed beside me every night. They chatted softly, played with my hair, massaged my feet and hands, and shared their snacks with me: popsicles, sunflower seeds, puffed rice cakes. After ten the two girls curled head to toe and toe to head on the opposite bed and immediately fell asleep. Like watchdogs they were nearby to protect me from any imaginable danger.
    My room was quiet but not up to American hygiene standards. The linen had been previously used; it wasn't dirty but it was not sterile. The room was dusty. Needles for injections were always disposable and new; the Chinese prefer to inject intravenously rather than give shots or pills. For four days I had several liter bottles of IVs containing vitamins and antibiotics. Nurses swabbed my stitches twice daily with a special healing solution after cleaning it thoroughly, and laughing merrily whenever I cried: "Ouch!"
    After the first day I was free to wander the clinic, especially before it opened and closed. In the early morning I discovered the staff gathered to play ping pong in the recreation room on the mezzanine; during the lunch hour nurses guided me into the employee lunchroom that reeked of garlic and shared their food with me. At night I sat on my bed and listened to the night watchman speak in local dialect, grinning toothlessly whenever he knew I'd understood something. Many times during the day a nurse or cosmetologist would bring potential clients down to my room so that they could examine my face. I was a selling point; "If a western woman would want this done then you should too" the staff said to the curious onlookers.
    After four days they released me as an outpatient. I went home to rest, and found myself exhausted. For the next eight days my only goal was to get to the clinic for a daily swabbing on my wounds and antibiotic IVs. This took place on the first floor in a room where ten patients at a time could lie on beds, chat with each other and watch the daily soap operas on a big screen TV. By the sixth day I felt well enough to make the trip by bicycle rather than bus, although my face remained swollen and bruised. I now had an ACE bandage that encircled my chin, cheeks and skull. "This will make your face beautiful, you must wear it continuously for one month," the head nurse told me firmly.    "Do not scratch your stitches." On the tenth day the stitches were removed and I was allowed to wash my hair. In a little over a month 90% of the bruising and swelling had disappeared; I began teaching again. "You look much younger," commented Miss Na on the first day of classes. "You are a new woman. I must do this operation when I am fifty, too."

CHAPTER 1: West meets East
CHAPTER 2: American and Chinese approaches to surgery
CHAPTER 3: First procedure in China
CHAPTER 4: Second procedure in China

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