Medical Examination Day

Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Once again, another great night of sleeping. The breakfast buffet here at the White Swan was wonderful. It's huge! I can't get over how big this hotel is...there's a three-story waterfall in the lobby! Lea, once again, had a very good breakfast of hard-boiled eggs, scrambled eggs off of Randy's plate (between bites off of her plate), yogurt, oatmeal, banana bread and watermelon. I have yet to find a food she doesn't like.

After breakfast, we met all of the families in our group in the lobby and walked toward the medical office. On the way, we dropped off some laundry at Ladybug Corner Laundry right across from the hotel. Next stop was the Photo Shop to get the girls pictures for their Visas. It was raining today so we had umbrellas and didn't get to take many photos. We walked through a very quaint park called Friendship Park with lots of bronze statues of people and children playing. Hopefully, if it's not raining tomorrow, I'll go back and take some photos.

We entered the Health Care Center of Guangdong building and were ushered to the back room. Over the door was "Examination Room for Adopted Children". There was a large waiting area with three small rooms attached. When we first arrived, one of the nurses came in and was trying to get the flat screen TV on the wall to work in English for us. Then another nurse tried to figure it out and then a third gentleman came in and started working on it. Finally, they got it to play the movie in English. As the movie began playing, we were all anxiously waiting to see what had taken so many people and so long to get going. As the title screen appeared the room erupted in laughter. It was "Kung Fu Panda"! Too funny.

The medical examination was very quick and simple. The first room was the physical examination. The nurse had a quick peek at all of her parts and made notes of any markings on her skin (birthmarks, Mongolian spots, etc.) and measured her head circumference. At this point, Lea was asleep (the appointment was at 10:00 - naptime). Well, she woke up and was not happy to be half-naked on an exam table. But the nurse was quick and then let me hold her for the rest of the check-up.  In the next room, the nurse weighed her - 6.9 kilograms, with clothes and diaper on, by the way - and measured her height. Since Lea got very upset every time I put her down, I didn't see what her height was. We will get a translated copy of her medical report before we leave here though. She also took her temperature under her arm - 97 degrees F - normal. The last room was the ENT room. The nurse tested her hearing by playing a keyboard on Lea's left side and a tambourine on her right side, one at a time. As Lea looked from side to side depending on which noise she heard, the nurse shook her head "yes". Then the nurse looked in her ears and told me, "No infection. Good." She then attempted to look at Lea's throat with the aid of a tongue depressor, but Lea would have none of that. I think the nurse finally gave up and said good anyway. And then we were done. Relatively painless.

We walked back to the hotel and all of the families met in the Swan Room. It's a playroom for the children sponsored by Mattel. It was a nice big room filled with toys of all age ranges. Lea was a bit overwhelmed at first but she got more comfortable and started playing with the toys before too long. While the kids played, the adults sat with our guide, Judy, and filled out a stack of forms for the US Consulate. It took about an hour and a half to complete them. Just to put it into perspective, the Chinese forms consisted of about 3 pages, two copies each and took about 20 minutes to complete.

After the paperwork was complete we headed back up to the room. Lea ate lunch and took a good long nap. Randy and I ate some left-over pizza and he read a book while I caught up on the computer. Much needed down-time. 

After Lea woke up we decided to take a walk around the hotel. First we walked back across the street to the Photo Shop where we were this morning and bought a nice folding stroller for about 110 yuan (that's about $16). Lea loves to ride in the stroller and we figure it will come in handy on the 3.5 hour layover in L.A. on the way back home. 

The hotel is gorgeous. Beautiful flowers everywhere and a coi pond with a waterfall in the center of the first floor lobby that goes up at least 3 stories. We walked around the first floor which has numerous shops and gallery pieces. Jade statues and carvings, beautiful wood furniture, jewelry shop, porcelain shops, clothing stores, cigar shops, shoe stores, handbags and accessories...I'm telling you this place is huge. We only walked the first floor and it took over an hour. The breakfast and tea room is also on the first floor and overlooks the Pearl River - very nice.

Later we met two of the other families and went to dinner at Lucy's Restaurant. Lucy's is famous among the adoption community for their much desired "American" cuisine. After you have been in China for almost 2 weeks, you crave a real American hamburger and french fries. Randy was very happy. I had tomato cream soup and a Cesar Salad. Well, I had some of my tomato soup, Lea likes that too!

We got back to the room and Lea went right to sleep. Randy watched a little TV and I worked on our journal. Well, off to sleep now...tomorrow is another busy day!