Elbow to Lip Style: The Unfortunate Incident of Hospital Trip Number 3

I had made it through my entire life without breaking, dislocating, or needing to stitch up anything.
And then I moved to C-Land...

This story begins on a bright sunny afternoon. The summer temperature was cool for Shanghai. The type of weather that is perfect for getting a group of people together to play a lively game of Ultimate Frisbee. So, that is of course, what we did:

The frisbee was thrown high in the sky. It was sailing... it's whiteness sparkling against the midday blue...whizzing along...a perfect throw really...it was just waiting for the perfect time to float down and be caught for a score!....

BY THE OTHER TEAM!

Well, I wasn't about to let that happen. So, glancing down the field and seeing that the opponent (Ryan) was running to catch the frisbee and had left his defender (I suspect Aaron) behind, I started running toward the frisbee, hoping that I could get to it before Ryan, jump higher than Ryan, have a stronger grip than Ryan––and successfully bring down the Frisbee for MY team, and for an interception.

We reached the point where the frisbee was beginning its descent. We jumped. Our faces were pointed upward, eyes locked on the frisbee, fingertips reaching. It was right there.....

and then,

I was on the ground. Blood dripping from a throbbing lip.

I had landed with my back to most of the other Ultimate Frisbee players. So as they came over, they asked "Are you ok?"

Me: "Yeah, just hit my lip, there's some blood."

Then, as another ultimater (Suzanne) came around to face me, all she said was "Oh... That's bad."

Me: "How bad?" (I've been to enough hospitals in C-Land to last a lifetime.)

Suzanne: "Bad, stitches bad....Hospital Bad"

Me: "Dang it!"

And thus ensued Trip 3 to a hospital in China.

But, this time I had people with me who cared what my face may one day look like without proper attention, so they made sure I went to a nice hospital with foreign trained doctors. I was off to see one especially trained doctor: a plastic surgeon! (when I came away, I even felt like I had gotten Botoxed).

The irony is that i was supposed to be going back into the hospital that weekend to have someone look at my pinky which still woouldn't bend past 90 degrees.
I tried to get the first doctor (the non plastic surgeon doctor) to look at it (my pinky) while they looked at my lip, but he said that I had to go to the Shanghai Number 6 Hospital which apparently specialized in bones, and so he wouldn't look at it. For the rest of the trip (I had to go to another hospital further away to see the Plastic Surgeon) I stopped worrying about trying to "double-dip" with my pinky.

So,
After one amazingly painful anesthetic shot to my upper lip (no lip rings for me!!!)
8 Stitches
1 week with a band-aid that made me look like I had a Charlie Chaplin mustache,
A trip back to the hospital to have the stitches removed....

and my plastic surgeon doctor is leaning over me with tweezers and a miniature scissor-knife, ready to rid my lip of any stitches when he notices that my fingers are "buddy taped" (because I had been playing tennis) and exclaimes:
"What happened to your finger?! ...(I explain) ... Why, I am a hand speciallist also! Yes, a plastic surgeon and a hand specialist! (he was a very happy Chinese man whose smile almost ate his head) We'll have to take a look at that....(starts feeling finger)... Oh! but first the stitches! Yes, first we will take out the stitches THEN we will look at your finger!"(goes back to removing stitches from lip).
Yeah for Hospitals!
Let's hope that I can go an apparent record 2 months without having to return to one again.

Oh! and the most important part of the story:
I stopped Ryan from catching the frisbee :D
Mission Accomplished.