Pyung-Won

That is the Korean word for hospital. How do I know this? Because I went to a "pyung-won" twice on Friday. Thursday I felt sick with flu-like symptoms but, reluctant to use one of my 3 sick days for the year, I went to work anyway. I took lots of medicine throughout the day but I only felt worse and worse. Toward the afternoon I started feeling nauseous and feverish so I left work early and came home and slept. At 1am I woke up and my symptoms were much worse and my fever was making me dizzy and weak. I had already taken a lot of medicine which had obviously not helped and I started having severe abdominal pain so long story short I ended up in the Emergency Room after my friend Dan called an ambulance for me.

The ER was pretty standard (I've only been to the ER once in the States though). Of course everyone stared at me since I was the only white girl. The nurses knew very little English so explaining my symptoms turned into a game of charades. They ended up giving me an IV and x-raying my chest and doing blood work. In the end the ER doctor (who was very helpful and spoke decent English) told me I had an infection in my throat. He told me I should come back around 9am to see the regular doctor.

So I came home and tried to sleep but I still felt just as bad since I hadn't had any relief from my symptoms and I still had a high fever. So I ended up back in the ER at 8:30am where they put me back in a bed and took my temperature which turned out to be 102.5 degrees. At that point I had total numbness in my hands and feet and my whole body was shaking. I don't think I have ever felt so cold.

They did a sonogram of my abdomen and appendix to make sure there were no problems there and that turned out fine. They also took some more blood. The doctor this time was not very helpful and spoke hardly any English. He didn't seem to understand anything I said to him which was frustrating but in the end he prescribed 5 pills for me to take 3 times a day. I came home and took the meds and slept for 8 hours. When I woke up my fever was gone. Saturday I still felt lousy but no fever and today, Sunday, I am feeling so much better.

So I got to experience a Korean hospital. I have now been to a Korean ER more times than I've been to an American ER :-). I was very impressed with the ambulance service which arrived within 5 minutes of being called. Having compared experiences with some friends here, the general opinion seems to be that Korean doctors like to over medicate and tend to make things more serious than they are. In fact, my students are frequently telling me that they went to the hospital that week or that morning for things like headaches, coughs, sore throats, etc. I always thought you only went to the hospital if it was something really serious. Either way, thankfully I am feeling better now and although the hospital here was very nice, I would be more than happy to never have to go back there ever again.