Medicine in Taiwan

So, I got quite sick this past week, and got to know a bit more about medicine here in Taiwan. To be fair, my host dad happens to be a doctor who owns his own practice, but I think the point remains: It's better to have a cold in Taiwan than in the US.

Host dad scheduled two appointments for me and a fellow sick fellow, and my wonderful host mom drove us to the office. Host dad listened to my story and took a quick look at my tonsils, then shot me up with some penecillin and wrote out a prescription... which he then handed to my host mom at the front of the office, who doled out the drugs. Then they don't only give you the drugs with the instructions, right there in the office, but they also wrap the drugs up in tiny little papers, so you eat all the pills in one bundle of paper, no thought required. And the whole thing should have cost me about 12 USD, I'm told (though, host parents wouldn't hear of me paying). Two appointments took twenty minutes, from sitting down in the waiting room to leaving with drugs.

Then there's also the soft medicine here: Moms! Like my host mommy who lept out of the car yielding an ear thermometer (which read in celcius, so I had no concept of what my temperature was!), insisted that we take 3 liters of sports drink each and some traditional Taiwanese pancakes, and then... this is a little overwhelmingly sweet... after sending me back to bed after the doctor's appointment, dropped by with a whole pot of freshly made chicken soup from scratch. Being sick has its perks.