Oct 21st, 2007
McDonalds in hospital
A while back during a check up, our Dr. at World Link (who by the way we like a lot) suggested we do a heart echo to follow up on a slight heart murmur she heard while listening to little Theo’s heart beat. I wasn’t too worried as I heard it’s pretty common but thought the echo might be a good idea. We made an appointment at the recommended hospital, i.e. Pudongs Children’s Hospital and got there bright and early. I had heard from our Dr. and from friends who had been for a heart echo before that the nurses generally prefer to sedate the babies for this procedure. I was pretty horrified at the idea but was reassured that it wouldn’t be necessary and that if Theo was well behaved the Doctor at the hospital would not have a problem with him being awake. As soon as we registered at the desk, after spending about 15 mins driving around the grounds of the hospital because noone seemed to know where the place was, we were asked to hand over Theo for weight check and sedation. Of course no Theo was handed over and we started discussing and saying that it wasn’t necessary and that our Dr. had told us it was fine not to blah blah blah, basically they said that there was no way they would do it with him awake. So we got our money back and left. I have to add that all this happened without Theo even making one sound as he was pretty well behaved that morning ; )))
After that nice waste of time I called spoke to our Dr. at World Link and she was very surprised about the whole thing, saying this had never happened and suggested we try Fudan Children’s Hospital. After trying to book the echo through world link and finding out that still he would have to be sedated unless he was sleeping I decided not to go ahead with it and to do it back in Italy at Xmas.
To the Dr. suggestion however we went to get a second opinion on the heart murmur and made an appointment to see Dr. Liu, a cardiologist at Fudan Children’s Hospital.
She was a very nice lady and said that we shouldn’t worry and that it’s something which he’ll grow out of in a few years! SO all is good but I do find the whole sedating thing really disturbing, it just seems so over the top.
Anyways here comes the reason for title to this post, on the way to the Foreigners VIP section or whatever it’s called, we were horrified to see that there is McDonalds on the grounds of the hospital, can you believe it? And if this wasn’t enough there were McDonalds sponsored posters, not sure if they were actual ads inside the waiting room. Clearly mcnuggets and health go hand in hand in some people’s opinion…