Paging Dr. Korea

Disclaimer: I am fine now and certain people, KENNETH H. MARKS JR., should not be worried or concerned about me following this post.

So Wednesday morning I woke up, essentially, thinking I had Ebola or … just puking my brains out. I couldn’t keep any food down, and was fairly certain that it was below freezing in my apartment (when in fact, it was pushing 85 degrees). After much hesitation, I called in sick to my office which caused a gigantic stir and all four of my co-teachers were calling every 15 minutes to make sure I was okay. One of them, Ms. Kim, came over to take me to a western-style doctor she knows who, apparently, works magic. Just my luck, the doctor was out of town for a conference, so she turns to me and goes “have you ever been to a oriental clinic?” I said no, and that I would be open to it. (Dun dun dunnnnnn….). [Note: I have no health insurance here yet (shout-out to the, some 250 million Americans sans health insurance) so thank God I have such amazing co-teachers.]

So I get there and no one speaks English. Of course. I tell them I’ve been throwing up, and have a fever so they put me under a gigantic infrared light and put heating pads (that are essentially burning my skin off) on my stomach and feet. This is the easy part.

Next, the doctor comes in. He seems nice enough. He smiles, and attempts to joke around with me, so I thought we would just talk– just like at home. Boy, was I wrong. He starts pushing on random parts on my stomach to find where it hurts (no big deal). Once he’s decided, he does acupuncture on my stomach, hands, legs and feet. (discomfort but bearable). I’ve had acupuncture one other time (thank you Adventure of the Seas) but this was the real deal, not some random Canadian girl who happened to study acupuncture for a year in college to pass the time. After a little bit of twisting and flicking and asking me questions and receiving blank stares, he takes out the needles. At this point, I thought I was done. Ohhhh man, no way.

He asks me to sit up (I almost puke), and then starts feeling on my spine for where it hurts. I can’t see any of what is going on but I’m pretty sure this is how it goes down:

• He puts acupuncture between each vertebra where I tell him it hurts. This, again, is bearable but I could think of about a million other things I’d rather be doing.
  
• Then, I kid you not, they use what feels like a STAPLE GUN OF THOUSANDS OF NEEDLES ON MY SPINE. Not once, but three times. Its really loud and really painful and I had ZERO heads-up. I pretty much break the bones in my co-teachers hand squeezing so hard. A little warning would’ve definitely been nice. From here on out, I’m giving my once-nice doctor the stink eye whenever I can.
• At this point, no only am I in a lot of confusing, and excruciating pain but the way he had me sitting, I thought I was going to throw up at any second. (In fact, I may, or may not, have thrown up my mouth – but that’s another story for another day). Next, they put these suction things on my back (after a Wikipedia search I learned that its known as, well, “suction cupping” and its some ancient medicinal procedure) that suck out all this blood from my spine and back. Again, because I can’t see what’s going on, I’m flipping out. It kinda looked like this: 

The doctor tells me, through broken English (God bless him…), that my blood is very dark which means that I’m pretty sick. He tells me that I am really stressed and that it is messing up my digestive system, and the rest of my body (which explains why I’ve had a perpetual headache for the last week). While insightful, I probably could’ve told him this was the case without enduring 30 minutes of pain, and being left with two half dollar sized blood scars on my back.

All being said and done, they left me with some herbal medicine that I’m to mix in with hot water and drink every few hours and makes me MORE nauseous, but my fever kinda broke so I guess he did something right!

Nevertheless, I have no work because it’s a physical exam day so my co-teacher is taking me to a regular, western doctor at the hospital so hopefully he can help me out more. In the meantime, I’m going to keep watching Sam’s Hugh Grant movie collection and lay under 15 different blankets.

Love and miss you all !! xx