So on Saturday I went to Joyfull Hospital in Seoul to have my hernia looked at to determine whether the surgery could be scheduled for Tuesday. Since my parents were in town, they came along for the ride (and Michael too). We got there a little before my scheduled 11 am appointment and I was seen right away. The doctor spoke very little English. It was a little frightening.
He examined me and said that he was pretty sure it was not an inguinal hernia, but a femoral. He drew me a diagram and it kinda made sense. So then he told me we would confirm the hernia with an ultrasound and then he would come back and talk to me about scheduling the surgery.
So I was guided upstairs by a nurse that spoke better English than my doctor. She asked me if I was ready to have surgery today. I was taken aback by that question, seeing as I was told this was only a meet and greet with the doctor. I told her no, I was going to try to have the surgery on Tuesday. She smiled at me and led me to the 6th floor, where my rounds of testing would begin.
First, I was taken to the x-ray room, where I had my chest x-rayed. This should have been my first clue that something was wrong. My problem area is not in my chest! Why are they x-raying me? Then was taken to have the ultrasound. I had to stand up on the examining table and they had me cover my "area" with a towel. There was no point to the towel, but I held it where they told me. The technician spent a long time examining the area. Then she told me she was going to find a doctor.
The doctor came in and he seemed concerned too. He started scanning up my stomach and right up to my bra area. At this point I was getting irritated. First at the fact that I had no idea what was going on. Second at the fact that I was standing there with my pants dropped and my shirt pulled up and I was very cold! Then the doctor scanned my right side. I think they were having trouble finding the hernia, but I couldn't be sure because there was a trail of blobs they were following up my stomach.
After what seemed like forever, they let me wipe off all of the petroleum jelly and I proceeded to another room where I was given an EKG. Weird, I thought, but I went along with it. Finally I gave a urine sample and three vials of blood, which had the word "ADMISSION" on them. Uh, what's that?
They took me back to the waiting room and I explained to the family how weird I thought that they would ask me if I had eaten today. My mom said that maybe they were going to do the surgery today. I was starting to get nervous. I was ready to ask the doctor how many surgeries he had performed and if they really thought it was necessary to start surgery on someone who hadn't fasted beforehand. A few minutes passed and I was brought back to the doctor's office.
He told me that the ultrasound showed signs of vascular dilatation, but there was no hernia. Most likely it was due to my previous DVT and was just some swelling or dilating in my veins. He explained that he knew nothing about these kinds of things so he would refer me to a vascular specialist if I wanted. I told him that was okay, he could just write a note and give me a copy of my $80 ultrasound so that I could show a new doctor in Chuncheon. He then went on to say that it was their "mis." They were prepping me for surgery and I didn't need it so they were going to take the blood work off the bill. You better!
So yeah, my mistrust of doctors remains. I remember asking the first doctor if she wanted to do an ultrasound and she said she knew a hernia when she saw one. Darn doctors (no offense to you, Cata, you will be the only doctor I trust :)! I'll let you all know what happens when a see yet another doctor in a few weeks.
Sunday, September 19, 2010
Thursday, September 9, 2010
My Experience with Korean Doctors (Part 1)
Welcome to a new series on this blog, the Korean healthcare system. Since this will likely be ongoing, I'm going to call this post Part I.
I finally went to the doctor today after being here for 7 months. At the slightest sneeze our bosses want to take us to the doctor, but we've been resistant. Until now, I didn't really see a reason to take advantage of the "sparkling" healthcare system of Korea.
Michael forced me to go to the doctor. I kinda knew that I needed to go, but I have a distaste for doctors after the last few painful incidents. So, to make sure I went, he told the head teacher that I needed to see a doctor. Let's get a little TMI now: I have a lump in my groin area. That was just as embarrassing for me as it was for the head teacher. To make matters worse, she had to discuss it with her "boss."
She kept coming back in to our room to ask about various symptoms. Then they finally decided they didn't know what to do. They didn't know what doctor to take me to!
The next day, the head teacher talked to a doctor friend and decided to take me to a regular physician. This is what is normally done in the US, but here in Korea you don't need a referral so you could go directly to the oncologist, for example, if you wanted to have them look at your tumor. I met up with the head teacher on Thursday morning and went to a woman doctor. I never learned her name and the head teach did most of the talking.
I walked in, the doctor asked me to pull my pants down and she looked at my "lump." It took about 90 seconds for her to diagnose my hernia. I have managed to do it again: get a seemingly rare condition that affects a small percentage of people. An inguinal hernia occurs in %2 of women, I've learned, and most of those are of middle age.
For those of you don't know, an inguinal hernia occurs when you create a hole in your stomach muscles and part of your intestines pops through. Yeah, I have intestines hanging out in my neither regions.
The next thing the doctor wanted to know was when I wanted to have the surgery. What? Luckily I already know what a hernia was and what was going on inside my body, but she explained none of this to me. The doctor and the head teacher had a lengthy conversation in Korean. I had absolutely no knowledge of what was going on. The doctor pauses her conversation to tell me it's not urgent, but she wants me to have the operation as soon as possible. Um, okay?
Guess what? I'm going to have surgery in Korea! Woohoo!
The head honchos at our hagwon want me to have the surgery during our vacation time so I won't miss any work. This is turning into a problem since our "vacation" coming up is actually a national holiday called Chuseok. All of the doctors in Chuncheon will not be performing surgery during this week and will not see any new patients next week for a consultation. This means we are on to bigger and better places: Seoul.
It's going to be down to the wire: I might be having surgery in 10 days, I might not! We'll see.
I finally went to the doctor today after being here for 7 months. At the slightest sneeze our bosses want to take us to the doctor, but we've been resistant. Until now, I didn't really see a reason to take advantage of the "sparkling" healthcare system of Korea.
Michael forced me to go to the doctor. I kinda knew that I needed to go, but I have a distaste for doctors after the last few painful incidents. So, to make sure I went, he told the head teacher that I needed to see a doctor. Let's get a little TMI now: I have a lump in my groin area. That was just as embarrassing for me as it was for the head teacher. To make matters worse, she had to discuss it with her "boss."
She kept coming back in to our room to ask about various symptoms. Then they finally decided they didn't know what to do. They didn't know what doctor to take me to!
The next day, the head teacher talked to a doctor friend and decided to take me to a regular physician. This is what is normally done in the US, but here in Korea you don't need a referral so you could go directly to the oncologist, for example, if you wanted to have them look at your tumor. I met up with the head teacher on Thursday morning and went to a woman doctor. I never learned her name and the head teach did most of the talking.
I walked in, the doctor asked me to pull my pants down and she looked at my "lump." It took about 90 seconds for her to diagnose my hernia. I have managed to do it again: get a seemingly rare condition that affects a small percentage of people. An inguinal hernia occurs in %2 of women, I've learned, and most of those are of middle age.
For those of you don't know, an inguinal hernia occurs when you create a hole in your stomach muscles and part of your intestines pops through. Yeah, I have intestines hanging out in my neither regions.
The next thing the doctor wanted to know was when I wanted to have the surgery. What? Luckily I already know what a hernia was and what was going on inside my body, but she explained none of this to me. The doctor and the head teacher had a lengthy conversation in Korean. I had absolutely no knowledge of what was going on. The doctor pauses her conversation to tell me it's not urgent, but she wants me to have the operation as soon as possible. Um, okay?
Guess what? I'm going to have surgery in Korea! Woohoo!
The head honchos at our hagwon want me to have the surgery during our vacation time so I won't miss any work. This is turning into a problem since our "vacation" coming up is actually a national holiday called Chuseok. All of the doctors in Chuncheon will not be performing surgery during this week and will not see any new patients next week for a consultation. This means we are on to bigger and better places: Seoul.
It's going to be down to the wire: I might be having surgery in 10 days, I might not! We'll see.
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
Vacation Part 3: Soerak National Park
On Thursday, we took a day trip to Sokcho, a coastal city on the eastside of our Province, Gangwon. We had originally planned on spending the night and checking out the beach and a few touristy things in town, but August is a big vacation month for Koreans and all of the hotels in Sokcho were booked.
Sokcho is less than two hours from Chuncheon and the trip was made by bus. I prefer trains, but buses do get you there faster if traffic is fairly normal. We left fairly early for the bus station and weren't able to leave until 9:10. We were a bit unlucky with our bus driver. He drove crazily along Korean highways and made some very sudden stops for two people who seem to get car sick. His crazy driving did shave time off of our journey though.
We arrived around 10:45 and immediately caught a city bus to take us to Soerak National Park. Fare was less than two dollars each making it very budget friendly. It took nearly an hour to get there because of frequent stops though. The park is seemingly huge. We did quite a bit of hiking and didn't make it through half of the park. I had read that it takes about 16 hours to hike through the entire park.
I packed a lunch of sandwiches, bananas and crackers and we ate it when we got to the park. We settled into a shaded patch that was full of other visitors doing the same.
The first thing we did at the park was buy tickets for the cable car. It is the most popular attraction at the park so you have to buy tickets in advance. We bought our tickets and had almost two hours to kill so we decided to walk around.
We saw the temple, the giant Buddha (I heard somewhere that it may be the biggest in the world?), and got a coffee from a vendor halfway up a mountain. We headed back and made it back about 15 minutes before our time of departure.
Waiting for the cable car proved to be almost torturous. Don't leave your house in August if you are in Korea, everyone and their moms are on vacation. There were so many people packed into a tiny space. And even though your tickets have a specific time and you can't go on the cable car until your time, many people still thought they needed to push and shove and be in the front of the quasi line that was formed. Anywho, we finally made it on the cable car and I'd say 8 bucks was worth it.
There are two trails from the outside of the cable car station. One leads up the mountain to a spectacular view.
The other leads to a "temple."
After we wandered back up the hill from the "temple" we headed back down the cable car. Those who are afraid of heights should probably close their eyes or just not go. We decided that before we leave, we should head up to the cave we saw a sign for earlier. The sign read 3.1 km. We didn't think that was too far and figured we could do that in a round trip of about an hour and a half. Wishful thinking.
What we didn't know was that the distance was counted vertically, not horizontally. That's right, 3.1 kilometers of mountain climbing, not hiking.
There were some spectacular views here, too. But we never made it to the cave. An hour and a half of climbing later, drenched in sweat, we called it quits and headed back to the park entrance. We took a cab back to the bus station because we were too tired to look for the bus.
We made it just in time for the 6:30 bus and a couple hours later were in Chuncheon.
Sokcho is less than two hours from Chuncheon and the trip was made by bus. I prefer trains, but buses do get you there faster if traffic is fairly normal. We left fairly early for the bus station and weren't able to leave until 9:10. We were a bit unlucky with our bus driver. He drove crazily along Korean highways and made some very sudden stops for two people who seem to get car sick. His crazy driving did shave time off of our journey though.
We arrived around 10:45 and immediately caught a city bus to take us to Soerak National Park. Fare was less than two dollars each making it very budget friendly. It took nearly an hour to get there because of frequent stops though. The park is seemingly huge. We did quite a bit of hiking and didn't make it through half of the park. I had read that it takes about 16 hours to hike through the entire park.
I packed a lunch of sandwiches, bananas and crackers and we ate it when we got to the park. We settled into a shaded patch that was full of other visitors doing the same.
The first thing we did at the park was buy tickets for the cable car. It is the most popular attraction at the park so you have to buy tickets in advance. We bought our tickets and had almost two hours to kill so we decided to walk around.
We saw the temple, the giant Buddha (I heard somewhere that it may be the biggest in the world?), and got a coffee from a vendor halfway up a mountain. We headed back and made it back about 15 minutes before our time of departure.
Waiting for the cable car proved to be almost torturous. Don't leave your house in August if you are in Korea, everyone and their moms are on vacation. There were so many people packed into a tiny space. And even though your tickets have a specific time and you can't go on the cable car until your time, many people still thought they needed to push and shove and be in the front of the quasi line that was formed. Anywho, we finally made it on the cable car and I'd say 8 bucks was worth it.
The other leads to a "temple."
After we wandered back up the hill from the "temple" we headed back down the cable car. Those who are afraid of heights should probably close their eyes or just not go. We decided that before we leave, we should head up to the cave we saw a sign for earlier. The sign read 3.1 km. We didn't think that was too far and figured we could do that in a round trip of about an hour and a half. Wishful thinking.
What we didn't know was that the distance was counted vertically, not horizontally. That's right, 3.1 kilometers of mountain climbing, not hiking.
There were some spectacular views here, too. But we never made it to the cave. An hour and a half of climbing later, drenched in sweat, we called it quits and headed back to the park entrance. We took a cab back to the bus station because we were too tired to look for the bus.
We made it just in time for the 6:30 bus and a couple hours later were in Chuncheon.
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