Stitches out.....or not.

We went back to the university hospital today to get Rick’s stitches out. We had been there on Saturday as per instructions to get his bandage changed. At that point I said, (or thought I said) we would be back on Friday to have the stitches removed. The nurse said, “Oh, no, you need to come back Tuesday.” I said, “But we want to come back Friday. We were told 7-10 days.” She was very insistent. Therefore, we biked the half a mile over to the hospital and went inside this morning. This is the first time we have been there that it was not either late in the day or a Saturday and previously, we were going through the ER. Therefore, it was a new ball game in figuring out where to do what. You register here (and pay for another hospital card because we had lost the first one). Then you pay for the visit. Then you find the dr. office and stand in line. The dr. swipes your card and hands you a paper and tells you to go down the hall. (Down the hall where???) Down the hall the nurse comes out and takes off the bandage and…… proceeds to replace it. At this point, I am tired and cranky and having trouble walking. I say, “No, you need to take the stitches out!” Then there progressew a long involved process of trying to translate from Chinese to English and vice versa using someone on a phone, and then finally going to find an actual someone who spoke English, etc. The final analysis is that we probably misunderstood their insistence that we come today. When they said “Tuesday”, they just wanted to change the bandage, not take the stitches out. They wanted us to come back tomorrow or even Thursday. (Why would you change the bandage on Tuesday and take the stitches out on Wednesday???) Well, we can’t do that: teaching, Rick has agreed to help with exchange student interviews, etc. They are not at all happy that we can not come back until Friday, but we say that is the way it is. By this point I am almost in tears. Very unusual for me. I can tolerate tremendous amounts of frustration and misunderstanding, etc. I don’t know why this particular situation was more than I wanted to handle, but it was. Maybe it was because when I was here on Saturday I walked the whole hospital thing without even using a cane(!) and today I was having trouble navigating at all.) Anyway, Rick looks better, although there are deep pools of bruises under each eye. He has not been in pain and it has not stopped him from doing any of his activities. Just today we made General Tso’s chicken, and he cut up and mashed the potatoes for potatoes and meatloaf. He also did the dishes twice, and stood on the stool outside on the balcony to hang clothes while I sat on a chair with the laundry on my lap and handed it to him, etc. etc. By the way, the bike was repaired in 20 seconds when the man replaced a bolt that had slipped from the fender and blocked the wheel. Just life.