A Holistic Health Experience in China

Although I knew something was going on when I started to feel decidedly unwell years ago, I did not respect my body enough to check it out immediately. I arranged to see a doctor only when I had completed a project I was particularly keen on.

Three months later, I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS) and had a whole new perspective on my body.

Although I was in a foreign country -- China -- and had only basic fluency in the Mandarin language, and although I was not even hospitalized in the same city I was working in (I was sent from Guangzhou/Canton to a hospital in Beijing), I remember the experience with fondness, not anguish.

Mine was an unusual situation: a foreign teacher in a country that often treats visitors better than its own people. My experience was not, then, a typical one, nor one that I would ever expect to be repeated -- there, or here.

What has stayed with me for 16 years is the understanding I gained of health, medicine and my body. What I remember most is that my body and mind were empowered to act, as opposed to my taking on a passive victim role, which institutionalization often assigns.

Since the diagnosis turned out to be a serious, chronic disease, being away from home worked in my favour. There was no one around me fretting, worrying, despairing as I underwent tests in hospital, and no one panicking once we knew what I had. Also, no one to lean on! -- I was forced to rely on myself to come to terms with my changed reality; I learned that I really can meet the challenges confronting me if I have no choice.

Multiple sclerosis is very rare in the Orient. So even the few people I did come into contact with, especially after I got back to "home base" (Zhongshan/ Sun Yat-Sen University), did not have a negative reaction to the news of my diagnosis. In fact some were even jubilant (there had been rumours of a brain tumour). I had to deal only with my own reaction to the diagnosis, no one else’s. It’s very hard, sometimes, for patients not to take on responsibility for loved ones’ sadness or despair. Being removed from people who knew how serious MS can be, helped me remain calm.

The job of getting better was made easier by the financial security I was provided. The last thing you want to have to think about when you’re sick is your income or medical bills. I had no such worries since I continued to receive my full salary. (When I offered to pay my own plane fare to Beijing, I was told this was the responsibility of the university). And I didn’t have to worry about losing my job. I felt completely secure, with nothing to think about besides getting better. A very positive mental environment!

In China I was a foreigner, a teacher and a "friend of China." There’s no doubt I was accorded special status and was given the best care which the country had to offer. One significant result of that was the complete trust that it engendered in me. This in turn allowed me to get the best from my mind and body that was possible.

The neurologist assigned to me in Beijing, Dr. Fei, was a small, impish woman who spoke about as much English as I did Mandarin. The pressure on her must have been enormous, but of course I saw none of that. She was totally devoted to her work and I trusted her completely. Once, because she was concerned that I was too bored during the weeks of tests leading to the diagnosis, she offered to come into the hospital on her day off to teach me how to knit.

I benefited a great deal from the holistic nature of Chinese medicine, something I had only heard about before. It is a lot easier to recover from illness, deal with a diagnosis, cope with an extended hospital stay when you remain "whole," when you never become just a collection of body parts.

I was very pleased to know that my emotions were monitored as well as the usual clinical measures. Each morning, Dr. Fei would ask the interpreter, "Jingshen hao bu hao?" ("How’s her spirit?") This served to increase my trust in the doctor, my sense of security, and the feeling that I still mattered as a person.

Ialso remained in control. Doctors and nurses did not take over my body, but checked with me about every little procedure. No one said, "We’re going to have to..." but rather, "Will you accept...? Can you stand...?" They were surprised that I agreed to drink the worst-smelling, most foul-tasting medicine I have ever ingested. "Most Chinese won’t take it," they said, in shock.

The hospital was old, the equipment old, the material standard not as high as I had experienced here in Canada. This was not a highly sanitized, sterile, clinical setting. But neither was it impersonal, even to one struggling with the language.

A spinal tap was done in my own room, so there was no frightening trip down dark, long corridors on a gurney. I had had one of these taps before and was amazed at how much more smoothly this one went, how much calmer I was. (I later experienced the same phenomenon when I had a tooth filled in a clinic, and sat in a line beside five or six others also being treated. The atmosphere was casual rather than clinical and I, usually a white-knuckled dental patient, responded very well to it -- even without freezing.)

An important aspect of healing, I learned, was the power of time itself. Like most Westerners, I viewed my body as something akin to a race car. Pit stops are rare and brief, with no time for gradual re-entry to the track. But the Chinese people were not in such a rush.

After the diagnosis was made and I had recuperated for a month, I felt well enough to teach full time again at the university. The doctors, however, gave strict orders that I was to be allowed to teach only half-time for the next semester. In spite of the fact that I was still getting my full salary. And I later had to admit that my work was more strenuous than I had anticipated. My not going back full time allowed my body to completely recover from the attack and hospitalization.

At times, the pace was frustrating. I was in hospital for weeks before Dr. Fei ventured a diagnosis. But that also worked in my favour. She, in consultation with other specialists and the head of neurology of the hospital, was very thorough in her attempt to find every system in my body that was not functioning as it should. I was glad she was, when this approach led to the discovery of glaucoma in one eye, a condition which can lead to loss of vision if not detected.

The tests and medication I was given once MS was diagnosed were very similar to what is used here. One aspect I particularly appreciated, though, was that Dr. Fei never gave me just one type of pill -- there was always something to counteract the known side effects as well.

When I got back to Guangzhou, I continued to recuperate in hospital there. I was visited one day by an elderly doctor of traditional Chinese medicine who took three pulses to gain information on various organs and examined my tongue and eyes. He then correctly identified problems I was dealing with, such as where I felt weakness. The prescription was what I affectionately called "forest floor" -- a cornucopia of things I could not identify. This was all boiled for me in a special kitchen, and then delivered in a thermos for my afternoon tea. It was truly horrid stuff and it truly helped.

Since returning to Canada, I still have faith in Chinese medicine, traditional or modern, and still take tablets to help me sleep (without grogginess!), to ward off a cold, to balance my hormones. I also have acupuncture treatments, which have helped with a variety of problems from lack of energy to difficulties with balance.

Unfortunately, once back in Canada I slipped back into the North American pace of life for an A-type personality and had more MS attacks, which resulted in visible disabilities. Now it’s even more important for me, as for all people with disabilities, to do what I can to get the optimum from my mind and body. And I’m very thankful for the firsthand experience I had in China with a medical practice that taught me how.

(Linda Ironside is a freelance writer living in Vancouver, British Columbia.)