Lisa Ma’s husband Dr. Ma is the Head of the “health check-up” at the prestigious Veteran’s General Hospital in Kaohsing, and this morning Becky and I were his guests. Back in Chch before this Sabbatical Break Brother David Zoan often encouraged us to have a health check while we were in Taiwan, but if it had not been for Wendy and Lisa’s arrangements on our behalf, we would not have done it.

We arrived at the hospital at 8:00am, not knowing what to expect. The hospital was very modern and clean. The waiting rooms had comfy lounge suits, 42″ flat panel TV screens and computers for patients to access the internet while we were waiting. (Maybe this is to keep us from imagining how big the needles are that they are going to stick into us. haha) The nurses were warm and friendly, patient and kind. One of our nurses was a Christian, and we chatted a lot. She was lovely, her name was Annie. The nurses were all very impressed that I could ‘speak Mandarin… “na-me hao”. After dressing up in the hospital gowns, we were given a “to-do list”. We had 10 tests, 10 little boxes on our to-do list to check off. Hight/weight/temp, blood pressure, blood tests, upper abdomen scan, chest x-ray, ECG, eyes, urine and ‘stoole’  and finally a consultation with Dr. Ma. (We also got a free breakfast.) It was a half day health check….. I am so glad about that… I didn’t want them to put anything ‘down’ inside me, or ‘up’ inside me.

There were about 20-30 other patients checking off their ‘to-do’ list, as well as us and Annie the nurse told me that this was a quiet day. I don’t really like to see Dr.s Dentists, or go to Hospitals, but it wasn’t too bad. So we will wait for our results in a couple of weeks, and hope we get our WOF sticker with no problem. Thank you so much Lisa and Dr. Ma. (I must tell you that Lisa offered to fix up my teeth while I was in Kaohsiung, but I politely declined… there is only one thing worse than going to see the Dr….. going to see the Dentist!)

We are back in Taipei now, after another ride on the rocket back from Kaohsiung. We will be here for just 3 more days then sadly we will leave Taiwan for Macao on Sat. and Malaysia, KL, on Sunday.

Thanks to all those who are reading my blog, it is quite encouraging. Yesterday was a record for hits on this blog for 1 day; 170 people. Keep checking on my blog regularly…. I have lots more interesting stuff and photos to share with you all.