I was born and would not take milk. In the village, the saying for what could follow was blunt: 'three days wild, thrown away on the seventh.' An old woman named Mrs. Liang could treat infants with needles, and after she needled them they recovered. There was someone in the next village who did the same and had treated several babies with the same problem. Now almost all births happen in hospitals, and a doctor handles whatever comes up, so the folk practitioners who needled infants have more or less disappeared.
I inherited my father's constitution and was sick constantly. As a child I had colds all the time and once had pneumonia. As an adult I have had very few serious illnesses but no shortage of minor ones. My father's constitution was not inherited: my grandparents were very strong, yet my father had suffered many serious illnesses from birth. I do not believe anything is accidental. I have wanted to know what causes and conditions led to his illnesses, and why I ended up with his constitution.
Illness in a small child is a particularly cruel kind of torture. It is torture for older children and adults too, but the degree is different. When a small child is ill, the parents have to coax them; the best method is snacks or a toy, something to make the child happy and distract them. Whenever I saw a child in the hospital crying over an injection, I wished illness would leave the world for good. But this is the Saha world, and ordinary people cannot change it.
Needles, bottles, and capsules
When I was small and had a cold, I was injected by the village barefoot doctor, at the town central hospital, and at a doctor's house in the village where my aunt lived. In those days there were not the many expensive compound medicines there are now. Colds were mostly treated with penicillin, streptomycin, and cephalosporins. Penicillin was mainly for Gram-positive bacteria, streptomycin for Gram-negative, and cephalosporins did not have the many varieties they do today. I have never forgotten the skin test before a penicillin injection.
IV bottles were large, 1000 mL. A child did not need that much, so the doctor would pour most of it out and leave less than half, mix in the drug, and give the injection. When I was very small I was injected in the scalp and in the vein at the ankle; when I got older, in the back of the hand or wrist. To keep a child from moving, empty medicine boxes were taped to the hand with medical tape, to prevent a bulge. The bulge happens mainly because the child moves, the needle pierces the vein, and the drug goes into muscle tissue and causes edema. Adults can get it too.
When I had a cold I was also given capsule cold medicine. I was too small to swallow the capsule, so my mother opened it, poured the powder into a spoon, and fed it to me with warm water. When I got older and could swallow capsules, I took them directly.
Because I was not developing well, my parents bought me Longmu Zhuanggu granules, in large round tins. Several of those tins stayed in the house and were used to store things. For a period I blinked hard; if I did not, it felt unbearable. We called it 'ka-me eyes.' Fish liver oil granules gradually helped.
What illness cost
My mother told me how it was when I was small: the money for my vaccines was borrowed, even when it was only 3.5 yuan. That was around 1990 or 1991. The price of that vaccine has multiplied many times since. When I was ill, my father's attitude was not concern about my condition but worry that my illness had cost him money. My mother would urge him again and again, and every time he would be silent for a while before taking me to the hospital. It is still like that today.
When my mother took me to Dr. Tong in my aunt's village for injections, she bought me snacks at the village shop. She told me that the shop owner, an old man surnamed Guan, was the older brother of an old man surnamed Guan in our village.
I often had tonsillitis. The town central hospital could not treat it. Beyond the ridge from the next village, however, there was a doctor who was good at treating tonsillitis. He used acupuncture and cupping, and also directly needled the tonsils. After a period of treatment he cured my tonsils. He also treated a lung problem for me. I remember that when he needled my tonsils he made me spit out a little blood, and sometimes if he did not needle it well I vomited on the spot. He put a needle into my neck, then applied cupping, and the fluid drawn out was cloudy.
After leaving that village we went over the ridge and came home through the next village. I remember that after those visits my mother sometimes gave me 50 cents, sometimes one yuan. When it was one yuan I would go to the village shop and buy Wahaha milk. I drank that bottle very carefully. If I drank fast, I could finish it from the shop to home. So I drank slowly, and even after I got home I would make it last half a day, each sip only a little. My father would say in his usual tone, 'What did you buy that for?' But as a child, I really liked it.
I attended the preschool class at the town central primary school. After preschool, my father rode his motorcycle along the main road to the doctor's house. It was about 1995. I sat on the back; my father tied my schoolbag to the motorcycle. One day when we got to the doctor's house, the bag was gone. It contained textbooks. The books were not as colorful as they are now; most were black and white, and some had patterns drawn in a single color such as pink. After the bag disappeared, my father, who was the village accountant, made a broadcast in the village asking about it. But we had gone by the main road, not from our village over the hill through the next village, so even if someone found it, it would not have been anyone from our village. My father took me to find the 'gardener,' the person in charge of the preschool class, and bought the textbooks again.
A breathing problem
When I was small I had pneumonia, and the hospital could not treat it. My parents took me to a doctor who treated it and guaranteed that I would not get pneumonia brought on by a cold again. To this day my parents have not told me where I was treated or how. I have no memory of it because I was very small.
Later I developed another lung problem. I think it was 1997 or 1998. My breathing was not normal. Because I could not get enough air, I had to take two or three hard breaths before I felt comfortable; otherwise it was very uncomfortable. I had a mild cough, worse after exercise.
Whenever I was ill, my mother's first reaction was not concern but a kind of scolding: 'A child with this constitution—what are you going to do, this child...' She would nag. I did not want to be ill. When I was in pain from illness and heard my mother blaming me for it, I felt miserable. Fortunately, she would urge my father to take me for treatment, and if he kept refusing, she would find a way to take me to a doctor herself.
I do not know the medical term for this illness. From the symptoms it resembled pediatric wheezing cough, but not exactly. The town central hospital could not treat it either.
Because exercise made it worse, physical education and the between-class exercises in primary school became a nightmare. The intensity of PE was beyond what my body could handle. So I went to some PE classes and, at other times, had to return to the classroom under the teacher's abuse and classmates' contempt.
In primary school we had three sets of between-class exercises. Two were the national sets used by primary school students at the time; a new set came out about every two years, and the school also choreographed one to dance music. Looking back now, the exercises were not very intense, but some running and jumping still made me uncomfortable. So I reduced the intensity of some of the running and jumping. The teacher would criticize me, but after I explained, the teacher understood—except for my fourth-grade teacher. The fourth-grade teacher was an exception.
Dr. Xia's alley clinic
Since the town central hospital could not treat my illness, my mother asked around for a doctor who could. That was how Dr. Xia came into my life. He had a clinic in a small, shabby room in town, down a narrow alley about fifty meters from the entrance. Outside, a hand-brushed sign said 'Dr. Xia Chinese Medicine Clinic' with an arrow. The shabby room had its door open, and on the door was a handwritten paper: 'Chinese Medicine Clinic.'
Walking home from school, if I walked fast, my condition would get bad. After fifth grade, the children from our village and the next village shared a privately run car from the next village for school pickup and drop-off, paid by the month. Before fifth grade, my mother took me to school and picked me up. She was not a smooth cyclist; sometimes she pushed the bike with me on it. Once, on the way home after school, we took a wrong fork. About a kilometer from home, I sat by the road waiting for my mother to come back. When she came back and saw me, she cursed me violently as she put me on the back of the bike. Some children from the next village rode past on their bikes and looked at me with a look I cannot describe. I still remember that scene clearly.
My mother took me to Dr. Xia. After feeling my pulse, he determined what my illness was and told me to come every day for needles, and gave me herbal powder to take. The treatment lasted several years.