Thinning the Stock

Why don’t I teach in Victoria, you ask? Did I mention the Slaves, the Organic Peanuts and the Green Puppies? The only way to get a teaching job in Greater Victoria is to get onto the substitute list. I could manage that with relative ease since I’m qualified in both French and ESL. Once on the list, however, it can take up to four years to accumulate enough seniority to land a regular job. I can’t go four months without steady, predictable income, let alone four years. To be sure, teaching jobs are available in other Canadian cities, but I came home to be near my family. If I’m going to move away, I’d rather head to a warm place overseas than a distant location in my own very large and mostly very cold country.

To thin the stock a little, I want to weigh some of the Good and Bad Factors in my ongoing ‘Canada Versus the Wild Blue Yonder’ debate.

The first good thing, of course, is my incipient grandchildren. I didn’t know about them when I made the decision to leave China, but I’m very excited and grateful to be on hand for their arrival.

Secondly, the Canadian Health Care System ranks high on my list of Good Things. Unbeknownst to myself, I wasn’t very well when I left China at the end of 2007. Increasingly, I felt exhausted and cold, couldn’t concentrate for long on anything complex, and began forgetting simple facts like my own phone number. Even worse, my hair started getting thinner and thinner and I itched all over. As 2008 progressed, so did my symptoms. By August, I was sleeping through all the hours I wasn’t at work and nearly falling asleep at the wheel as I zoomed up the highway, homeward and bedward bound after yet another interminable day.

One evening, Wumbles took me aside and said, “Mom, you’re fading out. See a doctor immediately.”

I did. Having feared early onset Alzheimer’s, I was relieved to learn my thyroid wasn’t working, an eminently fixable problem. On the scarier side, I may or may not have slight kidney dysfunction which may or may not be connected to the Tainted Milk Scandal and the fact that I fortified myself with vast quantities of cafe au lait every morning of my Chinese sojourn. Stay tuned.

This is not to imply that China doesn’t have a creditable medical system. It does. It’s just that it swings between Absolutely Excellent and Bloody Awful with no points in between and you’re never sure, at first, which of the two extremes you’re dealing with. My most common experience went something like this:

I’d present myself at a campus clinic or hospital and describe my ailment, anything from an infected cut to a persistent headache. The doctor would give me a cursory examination, display signs of great excitement and call in her colleagues, who would also start jittering with excitement.

“We think you are having a heart attack,” they’d announce, barely able to contain their glee.

I’d be painstakingly hooked up to an EKG machine and plugged in. Within minutes, disappointment descended.

“Your heart good,” came the gloomy diagnosis, “Very strong.”

Then I’d be handed a bag full of dried toads and papery snake skins and sent home with instructions to boil up a “health tea.” On one occasion, I was still bleeding as I stumbled along with my loot bag; on another, I had a migraine so bad I could barely see. I consoled myself by humming My Heart Will Go On and shaking the toads like maracas.

Canadian dentists also come in for their share of praise. Due to small pebbles that lie in wait for the unwary rice eater, I had to have two teeth extracted in the People’s Republic. One of them dislodged a bridge on its way out.

Dr. Li was very excited. Most Chinese people can’t afford to have their teeth repaired or replaced. If a tooth goes bad, it’s pulled. End of saga. Dr. Li, like the majority of dentists, never gets to perform any of the fun procedures he learned at dentist school – root canals for example – so treating foreigners offers previously unhoped for opportunities. Dr. Li told me the story of American Bike Rider who fell off his bike and cracked a tooth. Dr. Li prepared to extract it. American Bike Rider indignantly insisted on repair. Dr. Li, momentarily perplexed but ultimately undaunted, located a dusty textbook, propped it up beside his tray of dental tools, and performed a perfect root canal in just under eight hours. Dr. Li went on to explain how he could build me a detachable wooden bridge for about $48.00. Loath as I was to dash his enthusiasm, I declined. He gave me his private cell phone number in case I changed my mind. I didn’t.

So, along with the grandchildren, Canadian doctors and dentists score high ratings in the Stock Taking Debate, especially now that I have benefits and can actually visit a dentist without selling said grandchildren to pay for it.

...one final installment to follow...