First trip to the doctors

Saturday, August 19th

What was supposed to be a three hour return trip to civilization turned into another marathon driving event but this one included barf, poop and pee by the bucket full. Although our driver did an outstanding job, otherwise I wouldn’t be typing this, he couldn’t control the amount of traffic off the mountain and it took us a total of seven hours to get to Chengdu. Sophia has a bad diarrhea problem and we had to make three high speed, multiple-G diaper changes. Two other kids threw-up because of the bumpy ride and another had a major diaper leak. Our bus driver must love us!

We got to Chengdu just in time to send out our clothes to the laundry and then decided to take Sophia to the local children’s hospital for some help with the diarrhea per recommendation of our guide and the doctor at the hotel. The hospital was close by so we got into a taxi with our guide for another white knuckled ride. The hospital was very efficient but not as clean as the hospitals at home. Thank goodness we were in and out of there quickly. The doctor wanted a culture of Sophia’s bowel movement. On command, Sophia would not perform. They asked us some questions, gave us some medicine and sent us on our way with a little plastic cup to bring a sample of her BM back. The medicine we were given consists of some pills we need to crush and some powder we mix with water, maybe something like pedia’lite. We have no idea what we are giving her but we trust the Chinese medicine seeing it is so well established. They also switched her formula to a lactose free one. She does not like it one bit. We got back to the hotel and before long Sophia gave us the sample we needed. Our guide brought it back to the hospital. We will hopefully hear the results tomorrow. If she wasn’t acting so cheerful we would be really worried.

Steve ran out to a local Pizza Hut for dinner and we agreed it was just what we needed after nine days of all Chinese food. After that Katie and Steve had a quick swim and we all returned to the room for playtime. Sophie is learning so quickly. She already is signing “more” and maybe “daddy”, has begun to crawl and pull her self up to stand and imitate our clapping and silly faces. We all can’t wait to get home and have you meet this adorable bundle of cuteness (Katie’s phrase).