Adventures By Design

As some of you know I have been entertaining an unexpected and unwanted guest in my left nostril. Nicknamed Norm, short for Abnorm, I noticed a small lump in my nose several weeks ago. At first I thought it was just a scratch and would go away on its own. But after a few days, it continued to grow and worse yet, it would spontaneously bleed. This was right at the start of our trip to Egypt, which was not an ideal location to hunt for a reputable international clinic (to be fair, we never actually looked, since in our experience the Egyptian approach to honesty and integrity do not inspire any confidence).

When we returned home, I made an appointment with a local clinic, where Dr. Ho poked around for a bit in my nose before stating: “You have a pyogenic granuloma,” to which he added in a somewhat awed tone, “and I’ve never seen one this big before!” I didn’t know whether I should puff up my chest in pride (few of my body parts win accolades for their large size) or hang my head in shame. At any rate, the recommended treatment was cryotherapy: freezing with liquid nitrogen. We immediately began the first administration, and then I returned the following week for an even more aggressive application. But Norm remained, stubbornly refusing to leave his probosical home. One my third appointment, three weeks later, Dr. Ho finally called in the big guns. “Arr!” he exclaimed, “I just want to grab it and cut it off.” Why didn’t he? Well, what characterizes a pyogenic granuloma is a heavy concentration of capillaries; cut into one and it will bleed its victim dry. Or at least that was Dr. Ho’s concern. So, he wrote a referral for a local hospital called Kowloon.

Visiting Kowloon I had high hopes that I’d walk in and they’d sit me down, pull out ye ole laser scalpel and that’d be the end of it. Although the support staff was pleasant, I was examined by a gruff old battleaxe, who insensitively subjugated my nose to her (unsterilized) probe’s will. In the end she announced that I would require surgery under general anesthetic and a five to seven day hospital stay! That came as quite a shock; clearly we had underestimated the magnitude of Norm. We asked if there were any other options-preferably ones that would require less time in hospital-we were told that a laser scalpel could expedite the process, but that unfortunately Kowloon did not have a laser scalpel machine. A pleasant nurse offered to find a hospital that did, and returned to us a few minutes later with the name and website of an ENT hospital associated with Fudan University. Plus, they had an English website where we could make an appointment online!

We left with high hopes, only to discover that although the hospital did have a website, the English link didn’t go anywhere. “Oh ya, that happens all the time,” our Chinese teacher, Vicky told us, “they do it to impress Chinese people with how high-class and modern they are.” And since most Chinese people won’t actually click the English link (and why would they?), the ruse works. Except that it doesn’t get them any English-speaking business.

At this time our Spring Festival vacation was starting. Spring Festival, aka Chinese New Year is a time when most Chinese travel to their hometowns, and most foreigners flee the country. For a great description, see Ryan’s post. For this holiday we traveled to Japan for a week or so to visit our good friends Allan and Glen. We wondered if we could get my nose fixed in Tokyo, for surely if anywhere in the world would be high-tech and modern it would be Tokyo. I had fantasies of robots or better yet nanobots meticulously dissecting Norm and repairing my nose. But one quick email to our health insurance provider ended that hope: they wouldn’t cover it in Japan, only China.

But now that our insurance provider, LAMP, was involved, things started rolling along much faster. A LAMP representative suggested that I have the procedure at Huashan Hospital, and even offered to schedule an appointment for me. Huashan Hospital has an international clinic staffed with English-speaking staff. So, seven and a half weeks after Norm made his debut, we have a solid plan for how to cast him back to the pyogenic abyss from whence he came.