So this wasn't so much an adventure as a misadventure. After being in Korea a little over a month I got sick. Most people do, they call it the Korean Crud. Apparently my immune system wasn't up to handling it though because it settled into my lungs. After the first week of cold-like symptoms I went to the doc who said it was allergies, suggested I might have asthma, and gave me a nebulizer treatment, inhalers, mucinex, and flonase. Allergies, right... Last I checked, allergies didn't cause fevers, and the following week I had recurring fevers of 100-101+. (I only knew this because my buddy loaned me a thermometer, sanitized in vodka because he didn't have rubbing alcohol. Yup, this is Korea!)
Finally after 2 weeks of hacking up a lung, I went in to the ER starting to panic with chest pain, difficulty breathing, and what felt like a knot near my heart. Say what you will (and I do) about military medicine, when you walk in with symptoms that could be a heart attack, they flat out MOVE! After running a few tests, having me chew some aspirin and a nitroglycerin pill (to explode the veins so blood moves faster through them?) they hooked me up to oxygen (beautiful, wonderful oxygen) and transported me to Hallym University Dongtan Sacred Heart Hospital.
I was a little nervous about this because I'd never stayed at a hospital, much less one in a foreign country, but in was very nice and the staff were all very kind. After a few days and seemingly every heart and lung test in the book, they settled on a diagnosis of pneumonia and put me on antibiotics. My only female friend here, Stephanie, came up and stayed with me the first couple days and nights. It is so comforting to have friends around at such a time! After 8 and a half days of treatment, I was finally released with another week's worth of oral antibiotics.
A few notes about the Korean hospital: the beds are just like other Korean beds. Rock. Hard. Fortunately, as they are hospital beds, it's not so bad because they adjust multiple ways. The Korean-style shower is perfect for a hospital. Since it's just a shower spigot in the bathroom with a drain in the middle of the bathroom floor, there's plenty of room and it's handy when you're unsteady and have to move carefully. The food was plentiful and mostly good, but a bit strange. I opted for western style meals rather than Korean, and nearly everything was covered with one or both of two sauces. One seemed to have a soy-sauce base, almost a teriyaki, and the other was mayo based. Apparently mayo goes on everything.
My Korean definitely improved! When I first got there, my medical Korean was limited to "it hurts" and "medicine." I had a couple nurses who spoke at least a bit of English, and between that and my broken Korean we got on pretty well. After spending over a week entirely surrounded by a foreign language, I understood a great deal more than I had in ages and was much more fluent with simple communication. Not the way I would choose to work on language skills but, meh, it works.
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