Monday's classes finished and I slouched home with most of my voice gone and a parched throat. I hung out at home, resting but knowing that I needed medicine. I met up with friends Jenny and Anthony and by the time they found me wandering in the street in front of their restaurant I was already in a feverish sweat. The two mercifully postponed their plans for dessert to help me find a pharmacy. Jenny is a fluent Korean speaker who has helped me immensely in the past and that night was no different. Even if I hadn't been in the middle of total brain-meltdown hallucinations at that point and I would have been able to read the Korean signs to find a pharmacy, I don't know how I would have communicated to the pharmacist. He probably would have assumed I had ebola and euthanized me on the spot. Jenny got the medicine and correct dosages. The total for 3 days worth of blister packed capsules, similar to what I would have bought in the US: Just under $4.
The meds helped and I was able to decongest my sinuses and sleep without fits of coughing waking me up. When I woke up I felt refreshed and ready to go. By the time I got to school it was apparent that despite my wanting to feel better I was not over the sickness. I teach 5 classes on Tuesdays and after the third one my voice was all but gone. The kimchi I piled on my plate at lunch helped but it was just a temporary fix. By 6th period I was reduced to American eye candy as my coteacher dutifully and comically taught my lesson on American holidays from memory after watching it once that morning. To her credit, she did amazingly well. I wonder what will happen if these kids ever go to the US and expect to see giant weather-controlling beavers on Groundhog Day and look forward to the Green Worshipping day otherwise known as St. Patrick's.
So the day fizzled to a close and I felt pretty worthless. My job is to speak to Korean students with my beautiful, non-regional diction. I dazzle them with my flawless pronunciation of "z" "x" and "th" sounds and never confuse "r" for "l" or "v" for "b". Today I just whispered and smiled, hoping that all those shrieks of "I love you" from the back of my classes were sincere and they would give me a pass for the day.
When I got to the teachers' office at the end of the day, I was met by Hong Woon-ki, my closest friend at the school. He told me that he was taking me to the hospital and he sounded authoritatively non-negotiable. At 4:00 on the dot we walked to his car and took off for what I assumed would be the shiniest rooms with lights and sensors and equipment that the US will get in a few years. If Korean dance clubs were any indication of the technology that this country wielded, I was in for a futuristic surprise. Clearly the guys who design dance clubs don't design hospitals.
As we drove to the hospital, I kept an eye out for the familiar green cross indicative to Korean health facilities ranging from laser hair removal to birthing centers. They place we went was on the second floor of an office building, and in the US would be referred to simply as a "clinic." I didn't think it was a big deal, I trusted Woon-ki. He is a sharp dresser, has impeccable table manners, and I am pretty sure he is trying to set me up with his future sister-in-law, so he is motivated to keep me alive. We got to the clinic and I showed my ID card. (Note: calling this a card is a mere formality. It is more like a pamphlet. I almost threw it away the day I got it). We had a seat on the plush couch and sipped some green tea as we waited for the doctor.
He called me into his room and Woon-ki joined me to act as a translator. Much of my feeling of personal space and privacy have been stripped away since I moved here through the natural workings of socitey whether it be people asking questions, walking around naked at the jimjilbang, or my previous crowded medical testing when I arrived. The doctor asked about pain then felt my right wrist. Then he felt my left wrist. He led me to the jimjil, a relaxation room where I laid down on a table with hot compresses under my back, a hot stone on my chest and a heat lamp on me. Woon-ki was a curtain away next door getting treatment for back pain that the Advil I smuggled into Korea and gave to him didn't seem to alleviate. The doctor went from patient to patient (me to Woon-ki and back) and started feeling my arms. He asked if I was OK with needles. I thought he was going to give me a shot. Instead, he started with the acupuncture. To his credit, it worked. Well something worked. I ended up falling asleep with the needle in my arm and my fits of coughing had subsided. Perhaps I have a strong predisposition for the placebo effect? An hour later I woke up and walked to the front to leave. My healing session was over.
The doctor got my hopes up when he asked if I was able to "drink coffee". Coffee! I drink coffee all day! I bought a coffee maker for my office and one for my house! I had been right all along! The cure was coffee!!!
If he had been one of my students, he would have learned much better vocabulary and instead of saying "coffee" he would have said "the bitterest brown liquid you can imagine mixed with chunks of dried roots that in ancient times were used to kill unfaithful spouses." But he just called it coffee. So at the front desk as I am paying for all of this, including a 3 day supply of bitter-brown-liquid Korean traditional medicine, the paper cup is handed to me with said brown meds and I am told to drink up. I was dressed, ready to walk out the door and I was instructed to drink this, in front of the receptionist. It turns out the doctor didn't think that I would drink it since it was so disgusting but he didn't want to say anything until I had tried it.
I finished it and vomiting crossed my mind, but I thought that it would reflect poorly on Woon-ki, so I kept it down until the feeling passed. I now have enough of this liquid to last me for one dose after eating until Thursday. I plan on taking all of them. As skeptical and cynical as I am, I think that medicine in the US is good but not perfect. I will give it a shot. It's not like this doctor just made the cure up, right? Maybe this will work. I am already feeling a little better and I have another dose to take in just over an hour.
I need to get better quickly...I have a million things I want to do.
These are the meds. They could easily be confused for garden fertilizer based on the appearance and taste.
*clears throat* BAHAHAHAHAHAHA
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