We had such a rough start over here - Leaf had a blood sugar crash accompanied by a seizure the first night in the hospital.  I found it very difficult to communicate with the doctor and nurse on night duty, even after we woke the interpreter at 3 am to come to the hospital.  I was more than a little shaken up.  I believe I am finally recovering from that extreme medical cultural shock.  After that, I wasn't so sure we could truly keep Leaf safe with all his endocrine issues while being so far away from home, our cozy western medicine, and Leaf's pediatrician who's been with him from day one.   Since then however, they've been striving each day to help us be at ease and keep a watchful eye on Leaf.  The interpreters often stay the night in the hospital as well.  

I have learned a lot about how the Hangzhou people handle projects.  Getting accustom to how people work in large teams has been a little bit of a challenge.  Half of our rough start was that I am so green to the East.  You'd think that working in teams would be natural and not much different than a US hospital staff working together - but really it's quite different.  Rather than getting a doctor visit - the entire doctor line up may come into the hospital room all at once, along with nurses and interpreters too.  Or rather than having one attending nurse, we'll have three, six hands working on the same IV or bandages.  Leaf gets very afraid when there are too many voices around - he feels he's going to get poked (most of the time he is right) so we have to work to keep the noise down.  Sometimes it is very reassuring to have so many helping hands, and sometimes it's chaos.  But, because of Beike's good care, we are seeing some amazing things both in Leaf's well being, and in many other patients here.  We've seen people regaining use of limbs, clenched hands of cerebral palsy relaxing, nerve pain from a spinal cord injury subsiding.  It's all quite beautiful.  There is a Chinese boy here with the same condition as Leaf who has gained some vision as well - he fortunately lives here and is on his second set of treatments.  Leaf is full of energy today; accomplishing physical feats we've never seen him do.  No doubt he is improving.  

The Chinese doctors, nurses and therapists are warm and wonderful people who very much want everyone here to gain health and happiness.  There are people here from all over the globe.  UK, Romania, US, I've seen photos of families from Hungary and of course there are Chinese patients as well. We feel lucky to be among them.