Friday, November 27, 2009

da da dun...

And instead of a happy thanksgiving at the American ambassador's residence in Seoul....

I was home sick. Probably with swine flu. (Although, the results have yet to come back on the blood work).

So, the beginning of this week, I'm just anxiously awaiting my reprieve before going home for christmas... Thanksgiving dinner with the F-Crew and chit chatting with the ambassador. The week's going by smoothly. I'm waking up tired, even after 7 or 8 hours of sleep (I now take showers at night in order to avoid the cold, wet hair in the extra cold mornings, so i can now get up at 7 am instead of 645). I tell my co-teacher, but I figure it's just because teaching is taking it's toll. Especially since I wasn't getting Friday off due to a cancellation of a talent show (because of swine flu. Oh, the irony).

So on Wednesday, I start to feel a little something in my throat. No big. I'll get some extra sleep. I wake up on Thursday and feel a little lousy. By lunch time, I get this uncomfortable cold feeling in my lungs. Uh oh. Thursday night, circa the late hours that you never want to be awake in, I'm sweating, tossing and turning, dramatic chills, I know I have a ridiculous fever, and i can't fall asleep. Problem city. After too much uncomfortable, I check the time - 5 am. And desperately wait to send a text to my coteacher to tell her there's no way in hell I was going to make it to the two classes that I agreed to teach before going to seoul.

Luckily, by the time we would normally wake up, my host mom was doing her thing in the kitchen. I told her I was desperately sick. She didn't have a working thermometer, but luckily, I seem to have a pretty good guess. As soon as I make it out of my room, I feel better. My room had turned into a sort of sauna, exacerbating my awful feelings. At any rate, I still knew I was sick. My coteacher took over my classes. My host mom was willing to take me to the hospital/clinic.

My host mom wanted to feed me after the family had left. So breakfast looked like this. White rice, a given. Kimchi, also a given. Steamed spinach with some strange sauce that she served on a previous occasion and told me it was one of her favorites. Didn't like it then. Didn't look good this morning. Then, to top it off, seaweed soup. Normally, seaweed soup is great. Comforting food that's also very nutritious. However, I've decided my host mom has a really high affinity for fish. Fried fish. Weird bivavles. Things with tentacles. Little gnarly looking fish that they grind up into paste. That they put in whole for flavoring soups, etc. This seaweed soup was full of tuna. From a can tuna. So it was just a little "from the sea" for me to eat. To my rescue, she eventually noticed me barely able to eat, and asked if it was too hard. I agreed and thankfully, away went the breakfast... yikes.

So, then off to the clinic. Luckily a short car ride away. Embarrassingly, close (just the other side of my apartment complex). We were confounded by insurance, but I had my host mom raid my wallet looking for a card that might help her make sense. She ended up calling the F-right dr's card we got in orientation. I, obviously, couldn't make any sense of what she tried to say to me afterwards, but I figured it was ok. I was called into the Dr.'s. He didn't speak English so it was time for me to act out my symptoms while he judged me for not speaking Korean. It's amazing that while I clearly don't have a handle on Korean, most people just tend to keep speaking at a normal speed, with no gestures, assuming that my korean appearance outweighs my ability to speak or understand korean. Oh well.

Then a shot/blood test (?) in the butt later, (demeaning), and 10,000W later (so much for being worried about not having insurance!), we were at the pharmacy downstairs. I got a box of tamiflu for five days (one at morning, one at night), and little packages of pills again (5 in each pack, morning, lunch, dinner) all for 44,000W.

Incredible? I think so.

So I'm on the road to recovery, or should be. I'm now just bemoaning missing my seoul food weekend with friends and worrying about having to teach next week.

Today, my body and head don't ache. No chills to speak of. And I just have this annoying cough that's beleaguering me. I also have my host mom spraying dettol, an aerosol disinfectant that smells terrible every other hour all over my room, and then closing the door...

So if i don't die from the flu, maybe i'll die from dettol poisoning. But maybe the next dr's visit would include some more colorful pantomime.


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