a run in with korean kryptonite

ok, I admit, I'm not totally invincible...thank you very much, Korea, for needing to prove that to me the week before 추석. 


After a few days of intensifying scratchy, gravelly liquification taking place inside me, I finally caved today and took a sick one.  Considering I've been here 7 months and this is the first--despite all the nonstop festivities of this life--I still argue in favor of my immortal status.  But, fearing a runny-nose-ruin of my island vacation, I am willing to concede defeat and seek treatment---or disappointment, as so often is the case when "professionals" give advice conflicting with my self-diagnosis.

Exhausted and dragging, dripping and sagging (but not too sick for word play!) I left the school armed with Hangul--the name of a clinic and my huge list of symptoms scratched onto a sticky note by my lovely coteacher-fairy-godmother, June.   I also should mention that I walked out of the office carrying a gallon of honey--no joke, a gift from one of the book salesmen--and instructions from the other English teachers to only drink warm liquids and to use the honey that is very good for you.

Drop off the honey, begin the adventure.

To begin with, taxi man isn't too sure where the clinic is.  I give him directions to the dong (which I'm quite good at doing) but since I've never been either, I'm no help.  He finally drops me off at a corner and points to the higher floors of a building (you get used to looking up pretty quickly in these stacked cities) and the name does indeed match June's print, and there's a happy little elephant next to the sign.  I'm already cheered.
Short-lived.  I climb the stairs to find the place long-since deserted with hangul scrawled across the door in marker (that I obviously can't read) and back down the stairs, outside, to find all of the pharmacies closed and June obviously in class and not picking up her phone.  But the sun is shining, I am not at school, and I will not be deterred.  I get ahold of Lily (boss of the English office, though easily the most clueless one of us all, gotta love her) and she tells me to walk to McDonald's and find the clinic across the street.  Just like in Daegu, where a plastic surgeon and skincare office are on top of McDonald's, it seems that Korea provides easy access to all the side-effects the greasy giant gives out.
But I couldn't remember how to get to McD's, and fate led me to ask the woman in Paris Baguette, who with the help of awkward charades, told me instead to just walk past Mr. Pizza.  Well, never have so many fast-food chains been the answer to my medical needs, but there indeed was the exact clinic I had found deserted across the street, relocated and lively just across the crosswalk where the Green Man could have led me instead.

The clinic is small, the first floor of several office buildings.  Cushy benches and KPOP fill the waiting room.  I give them my card, wait awhile (actually only a very short while) and am called back.  The doctor, who has a sort of overgrown frazzled look about him is quite the contrast to all the well-dressed well-pressed flight-attendantesque nurses.  He even has one of those large round mirror things on his head (I still have no idea what these are or what they're used for and am too lazy to actually look it up).  When I am called into the examining room, there is still another girl with her mother being examined--no doors, no privacy (not that I can understand, but if I could...)  The examining room is just one open doorway from the waiting room.  It feels like an over-crowded room belonging to a dentist--there is no bed, just a big chair in the middle of the room, surrounded by all kinds of instruments and gadgets and stainless steel, the doctor and his desk right next to it.  He was really nice, sticking tiny cameras in my ears and nose and throat and showing me things I really think are concealed by skin for a reason, describing what he was going to prescribe and telling me to come back in 2 days.  And the nurses--no I'm calling them attendants from now on--stood by in their pink cardigans, not really doing anything until they escorted me the ten feet back to the front desk.  The whole process, entry to exit, took maybe twenty minutes (overestimating) and I'm walking out the door with my paper for the pharmacist.

One last hiccup, since we could never get off so smoothly as that.  I cross the street to one of the now-open pharmacies.  Wait in a small line, hand over my prescription to be told no and pointed out the door.  Runny nose on the verge of breaking, I wait for Green Man to guide me back across the street, back into the clinic, where a lovely attendant (who I feel guilty for not smiling at) walks me outside, two stores to the left and bows me into the pharmacy.  Hand over my paper.  A few moments later, my name is called, and I am delivered a strip of individually-wrapped pill packets and instructed to take a packet 3 times a day.  Mystery meds, no written instructions necessary.  I only have 4 different colors and shapes in my sachets--I've seen people with loads more.

Koreans are notorious for over-diagnosing, over-medicating...BUT as easy as the visit was, as much of a comfortable, painless improvement on the American healthcare I am used to, I was still met with the same disappointing cop-out diagnosis: Allergies.  Bullshit.  I haven't been sick or stuffy or weak this whole time, and suddenly, in the span of a few days, I'm a blubbering mass crippled with congestion.  My vote, sinus infection (gross)--there I go again, self-diagnosing...I really should stop that.

Either way, doctor's visit and meds cost me less than four bucks.  The ironic part was that I finally buckled down and splurged on a multi-vitamin.  Prevention, or rather, daily sustained health, costs me more here than it does to have my systems go haywire.  I saw multivitamin pills that would cost about 6 bucks for a bottle at Walgreens going for 48,000won (that's almost $45!!!).  I settled on the strawberry vanilla chewable multivitamin (ugh).  Cheers to our health.

And my mantra continues: healthy and strong healthy and strong healthy and strong heal...