Bronchitis in Beijing

I have bronchitis. The pollution in Beijing has been very vicious lately and this started as a cold, and then progressed to where I can hear "tweeting" on every exhaled breath. Loud enough sometimes, that Rick could hear it too. I have had pneumonia 3 times in my life, and that "tweeting" was part of it. So I went to the dr. today. Always strange that one cannot go to the dr. by oneself. It is just complicated to know how to get to registration, cashier, waiting room, find the room when your appointment number is flashed on the screen. Talk chinglish with the dr., find the way to the window for a finger stick. Go down to the hospital basement for chest x-ray. Decide if you are going to get undressed and put your hair up in a rubber band for x-ray or not. Feed your hospital card into the ubiquitous machines to get the lab results. Find the doctor again who prescribes meds. Question dr. about what the meds are and remind her that I am allergic to sulfa and penicillin. What is sulfa? etc. Feed card into machines again (different set) to order meds from pharmacy.  Get meds when name flashes at pick up window. Thank profusely the student who accompanied you through the whole process and read all the Chinese signs. The funny part is that really I feel fine. No fever, sleeping OK, a little tired, but breathing OK. But the dr. said it was good I came when I did because my blood work says that it could move on to pneumonia. I biked to and from the appointment in the cold, so obviously I am not really feeling sick. But I also thought I would tell you.