at the Hospital

Yesterday was my first experience at a Chinese hospital. It went like this: After not being able to keep food down yesterday, spanning into this morning, I decided it was time to visit the hospital.
Our school contact walked with me and our team leader over to the hospital. The 10 minute walk had never seemed so long in my life. People were clearly looking at us and probably wondering what was going on with the foreigner. Our school contact told me quite simply that the problem was the changing weather and the fact that I was not wearing enough clothes—the apparent cause for most illnesses in China.
Finally, we made it to our campus’ hospital. The “hospital” consists of about 5 rooms in the lower level in one of the dormitories.
We walked into a small room, and there behind the desk was the doctor—no preliminaries here. He asked me what was hurting, had me take my temperature, and then asked what kind of medicine I wanted. Um, I really did not know what kind of medicine I want—whatever will do the trick.
After a few minutes of discussion between the doctor and our school contact, it was decided that I should have an IV with saline and then take a rest.
Apparently, an IV is the preferred treatment for most illnesses. So, I went to another room with about 4 beds, each 2 feet apart. There were about 3 other people in this room who were receiving similar “treatments” as I was about to get.
The nurse did her best to find my vein, but I was pretty dehydrated, so it was not a very smooth stick. She had to call for reinforcements. I almost puked and fainted at the same time, but luckily I was able to hold it all together. The doctor came in several times at the beginning to check on me. He was smoking.