Monday, December 10, 2007

Big White Barbie Pees in a Cup

There are two topics which I pointedly don't blog about: my sex life and my health. Were I to blog strictly on the former, there would practically be no blog whatsoever. That is to say, I don't get a lot! And even if I did, it's not really my thing to write home about it. While I may live almost every last detail of my life on the internet, there are some things that have to remain sacred. As for my health, there is rarely anything going on in that regard that inspires me to ramble. The odd time that there is, it's either private or just not particularly interesting. Yet today, I'm about to break tradition and ramble off about one of things.

I woke up Saturday morning with the distinct impression that something was wrong. As a result of the discomfort, I was unable to get my hung over ass back to sleep; not the nicest 9am wakeup call of my life. I realized within about 10 minutes that I had no other option than to go to a hospital that day. There was no way that I was going anywhere for several hours, so I withered around in discomfort and pain for a few hours, as I attempted to sleep my stupor off. This was met with little success, so I finally crawled out of bed and made my way to the hospital.

There was some confusion on my part as to whether or not I could even go straight into a hospital or if I needed to find a special clinic. For all I knew there was a doctor wagon that parked next to the street meet folk. Thankfully, a friend of mine here cleared things up for me quite nicely and explained that no, there is no doctor wagon so, yes, just go to the hospital.

I knew more or less what I had, and after finally being granted a chat with an English speaking doctor, I explained to her my suspicion. Unfortunately, they had to be sure. This resulted in my peeing in a cup, giving blood, and having chest x-rays done. Yes, chest x-rays! I think that they were checking for kidney stones or some blah. All I know is that I had to have them done twice because I left my necklace on and navel ring in the first time. Had the radiologist spoken a lick of English, or I spoken a lick of Korean, this could have been avoided. As it was, they're lucky that I didn't show up to the x-ray room butt-naked. Or unlucky, depending on how you want to look at it.

Now, I was suspicious that they were going through a large number of tests because I was clearly a dirty foreigner, hence I was clearly lying about my condition and actually had a nasty sexually transmitted disease. Because in case you didn't get the memo, all foreigners in South Korea have AIDS. We're here to spread the love! I suppose it's possible that they were also just being thorough, but it only required one test to prove what my issue was. Yet, I accepted my place in the hospital as The Foreign Slut and went through the battery of tests; with little other choice, I figured that I might as well enjoy the tag, in spite of being totally unworthy of it.

The first test was simply a urinary analysis; in other words, it was Pee-in-a-Cup time! One of my favourite sports in university; I was right at home! I Pee-in-a-Cup like a fucking pro. Thankfully I'm very skilled with this, or I might have been put off by the nurse handing me what appeared to be an unsanitized beaker. In Canada I had grown accustomed to urinating in a nice little sanitized cup that had it's own special lid and a label just for me! That's simply not how we roll here, in Korea. Sanitation and labels are for pussies! I took that unsanitized beaker up the hallway to the hospital's public toilet, filled it like a fucking champ, and walked it back down the hallway to hand to whichever lucky random doctor or nurse I ran into first.

After they gave up their vain search to prove that the dirty Foreign Slut had syphilis, the doctor agreed to put me on antibiotics. For some bizarre reason, they like to administer as much as possible via the needle here. Hence, I was put on an IV drip for the first time in my life. After that half hour of pleasure I was given a goody bag of pills to pop, and was on my way.

With that, I successfully survived my first trip to the hospital in Korea. I couldn't fool myself into thinking that it would be my last given that they insisted I return again on Monday so that I could pay them even more of my not-so-hard-earned cash. Round two, coming at you sometime later this week!

And you thought I was going to blog about my sex life. Tsk tsk.

1 comment:

Leena. said...

So, you went to the hospital because of the distinct whatever that something was wrong? :S

A chest X-ray. Taken from a guy who doesn't speak English. Hmm.