January 20, 2011

It's not every day you say, "Yeah, it's sarcoidosis!" But given that the other possible diagnoses for my inflammed chest lymph nodes were TB and cancer, I'll take what I can get at the moment.

Bronchoscopy is Hell on Earth for about 40 minutes. My doctors apparently skipped the give-the-patient-a-sedative step. But otherwise, things went as smoothly as could be, and as the big C was eliminated (TB had already been eliminated from a simple skin test days earlier), I'd say it was worth time standing still while I actually felt the insides of my lungs in a sort of inside-out sort of way.

I have nothing but praise for the doctors in the Respiratory Ward at Chaoyang Hospital.

I also have no qualms with the fact that 1 week in the hospital, a bronchoscopy, a biopsy, CT scans, X-rays, and numerous consultations with various doctors in various departments ran the ginormous sum of 7100 元. That's about $1078 US for the whole kit-and-kaboodle.

In contrast, the average hospital stay in Canada in 2008 cost about $7000 Canadian ($7016 US or 46,312元). I couldn't find an average for America, but plan to watch Roger Moore's Sicko in the very near future.
____
PS. I've watched Sicko, and every American with health care should watch this movie. (Jan. 23, 2011)