First Winter Ordeals in Korea: In Which Steph Gets Mysteriously Misdiagnosed With Bird Flu and Receives Her First IV Drip

I had been warned by numerous parties in the months leading up to this: my first winter in Korea would be particularly vicious upon my immune system. I was told stories of perfectly healthy twenty-somethings who, within a month of arriving in Korea, came down with the most serious illnesses of their lives. We're talking hospitalization, everything. Good thing health care in Korea is so affordable!

The weekend before Christmas, I came down with spectacular symptoms. Sore throat, throbbing sinuses, inner ear pain, headaches, full body aches... you name it, I most likely had it. Stupidly I struggled through the weekend, pretending that it was just a temporary dip in my health. But Monday dawned, and it had been over 24 hours since I had slept well and eaten more than a few spoonfuls of stuff, and I decided, fine, I'd go to a local health clinic, get some antibiotics, and beat this illness to the ground.

A dear but unfortunate friend of mine accompanied me to the clinic. It's a good thing she agreed to come with me, too, because in addition to the language barrier, I was totally not myself. Lights looked weird and buildings were kind of wavering in my vision. I decided to conserve my energy and focus on my hot, uneven breaths making their way in, out past my ravaged throat.

The doctor at the clinic announced that I had a high fever, so he couldn't give me any antibiotics until I had first brought the fever down, which would take a day or two. (In retrospect: HAH!) I zombied over to an examination room, where a nurse told me that I'd get a shot that would help decrease my body temperature... a shot in my butt. Yes, I live in a culture where butt shots are commonly prescribed. Something about the shots being more effective sooner.

This is where things go a bit fuzzy.

The nurse told me I'd be getting a butt shot, and the next thing I knew, my world had shrunk to the wall I was clinging to as a wave of dizziness crashed over me and flung me around. I couldn't draw enough breath into my lungs. I didn't know which way was up and which was down. I'm not sure how long I lasted that way, seconds, minutes, hours, but when I finally came back to my head I was lying on the examination table and the shot had been administered. I dimly had felt two people heaving me onto the table, felt someone unbutton my jeans for me. (Afterwards, my friend joked, "I feel bad that I kind of took advantage of you. I feel like I should've wine-and-dined you first.") But the resounding thought that was in my head--indeed, the thought that would haunt my mind for the next few days--was that I just wanted to be left alone so I could cry angry tears over how I hate not being able to control my body, to will away any ill health.

Anyway, stuff continued to happen. My friend informed me that, after hearing that I had been to Taiwan the previous weekend to visit relatives, the doctor said that I might have avian bird flu, and so I should go to the hospital across the river. (In retrospect: WHAT IN THE H---.) In the hospital: hours of bureaucracy and procedures to follow. Leaning against walls or lying down whenever I could. Meanwhile, stumbling wherever my friend led me and thinking, melodramatically, "Is this death? I think death might be preferable to this."

Anyway, I can't even make the hospital procedure part sound interesting for this blog post. To make a too-long story short, eventually I was able to see a doctor, who made a funny face at being told that the first doctor thought I had bird flu (at which point the first doctor was promptly nicknamed The Quack Doctor. I mean, bird flu, really? Did he think that Taiwan is all farmland and I was playing with my family's chickens on my ancestral farm?), made an even funnier sound upon looking at my throat (hah hah), and then finally, finally prescribed me an IV. Oh, the relief. Not that I crave IV drips like people often do in China, who, when they feel even the slightest bit under the weather, rush off to the hospital and get hooked up. It's just that at that point I was feeling seriously dehydrated and weak from not eating. I was drinking fluids aplenty, but the moment any swallow passed, with difficulty, past my throat, my tongue shriveled up into a desert again and I was fairly panting with thirst. That, plus the no-appetite thing, actually made me appreciative of Asia's penchant for prescribing IV drips to ill patients.

Here is a random picture of it snowing in Seoul, because. Um, 'tis the season?

I thought it'd be too Generation Me-Me-Me of me to take a selfie while hooked up to the IV, so unfortunately I have no pictures of the now-memorable incident. But there I was, a contraption taped to my arm (I have a thing with needles and fainting so I didn't look too closely), trying to distract myself from the fact that, right before me, some unnatural fluid the yellow of semi-unhealthy piss was flowing into me. Around me were the rattling coughs of octogenarians, the nasally voices of the same octogenarians yapping to the nurses, the darkly funny trill of someone's "Dancing Queen" ringtone going off beyond the plastic curtains around my bed.

Before, I had this conception that an IV drip was a miracle medicine, a legal sort of steroid that would have me bouncing out of the hospital bed, ripping out the needles, and skipping towards the door. Yeah, no. Sure, it brought me from 10% (on blackout's door) to around 30% (limbs have stopped shaking, though still weak), which was good, and got me home, and made ever optimistic me think that I was on the track to recovery... and then the next day I was promptly back on the hospital bed, with IV Drip #2 in my arm.

I'm still on the road to recovery, I think, but at this point I'm closer to the end than the beginning. I never received an official diagnosis (language barriers, y'all), but I'm pretty sure I had a nasty combination of the flu plus a throat infection. Hmm. Sounds about right. My sense of taste still feels a bit off, but I believe I am consuming an acceptable amount of food now.

But enough is enough. The point really isn't anything deep like how punishing Korean winters can be, or how accessible Korean health care is. It's just that I had a story about my life in Seoul that I wanted to share. And that may bode well for the future of my blogging.

Thanksgiving 2013 Update

I told myself I'd give myself until Thanksgiving to write this post. Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. Not only does it bring about the promise of good food and (sometimes, if I can swing it) family, but the anticipation of Thanksgiving helps me keep in mind the humbling thought of gratitude for the blessings I have in my life.

Boy, are there a lot of blessings. Some of you remember the post I wrote over the summer in which I talked about realizing that I had had depression for the majority of my life, culminating in the mental and almost physical paralysis it cast over me this summer.

I'm still not sure how I managed to climb out of that seemingly bottomless hole, and I still don't like thinking back to those months and analyzing how un-human I felt. But I'm happy to say that, for me, medication helped tremendously. For the first time since I could remember, my brain stopped using most of its power to churn out insipid anxieties and started redirecting all that energy to activities that actually meant something to me. I was in shock the first day I completed all the items on my to-do list with energy and time to spare. I couldn't remember the last time I had been able to do that.

Even better things happened. In what was probably the best professional decision I made in my post-graduate life to date, I accept a job offer as Head Media Librarian at an academy in Seoul, South Korea. Even if you knew nothing about what I do for my job, doesn't my job title just sound like a delicious concoction of all the literacy- and education-related issues I have ever felt passionate about? And indeed it is. I'm helping to develop and run an experimental literacy program that's somewhere between a typical reading&writing classroom and a library. So basically my job entails reading children's/YA books and talking about them with kids in order to advance their creativity and critical thinking skills. Oh, and also I get to do projects that end up looking like this:

Oh yes, I consider myself very lucky for having an intellectually stimulating job where every day is a different challenge and a reward. And also that I get to read YA books and get paid for it... hah!

The upheavals in my life this year made me realize most sincerely the importance of having supportive loved ones in my life, and thus this year has also been for me a year of learning about how to make strong, lasting connections with people I care about. This isn't going to be an overnight fix because me and people is like "uh," but I truly have been trying my best to encourage valuable friendships both old and new. A side effect of taking antidepressants is that I have become much more extraverted: there are actually many times when I--gasp!--would rather hang out with people than be by myself! The shocker!

No, but in all seriousness, the changes I have gone through this year have made me fully aware of how blessed I am to have the loved ones I already have in my life, and my luck at finding so many new friends with whom I have so much in common, with whom I can find so much joy and inspiration.

That said, I'm not sure where this leaves me in terms of my blogging. I'd like to start again, writing about things I've noticed about teaching children's lit to young EFL kids, but it certainly won't be in the same capacity as it had been before. Instead of making any promises, then, I'll just leave you with this update on my life. Boy does it feel good to be able to write about happiness!

A Visit to South Korea

I'm taking advantage of my current location in Asia by traveling to many nearby places usually less accessible from the US. In June, I visited my college friend Melinda, who's currently on a Fulbright teaching fellowship in South Korea. Naturally, I jumped at the opportunity to A) see her again, B) travel to another country I've never been to before, and C) go to Korea, which I've heard great things about and have always wanted to experience for myself!

Mel teaches English in Jeonju, a sleepy, smallish city nestled in between mountains. There's not much to do there but we did go to this hanok village, which is a small neighborhood built in the traditional style, and have some delicious tea in a traditional-style teahouse under a brilliantly blue sky.

The rest of my time there was spent in Seoul. Some highlights were Bukchon Hanok Village, a hilltop covered with traditional-style houses that people still live in. Meandering through these alleyways makes you feel like you're slowing moving backwards in time:

Then there was Gyeongbokgung, the main palace that has housed several dynasties' worth of royal families (and their concubines! they have separate concubine quarters!) and was the target of many foreign invasions. It has only been restored in the last 20 years or so, and parts of it are still under restoration:

I was fascinated by the Cheonggye Stream. It's an old stream that runs through Seoul and has gone through many reincarnations: as a peaceful observer of small business owners' shops, a sewer for migrant workers' shantytowns in the early 20th century, hidden from view and forgotten when the city built a road over it, and finally uncovered, cleaned, and restored as a romantic walk:

Mel has an interest in South Korea's cafe culture, and after going to a few, I can see why it's so interesting. Each cafe is highly unique with the most carefully thought-out decorations. It's like an extension of its owner's personality and interests, like walking into an acquaintance's bedroom for the first time and learning more about them through what you see:

These are kimchi pots! You make kimchi in these things!

I didn't take many pictures of all the great Korean food I had--I was too busy stuffing myself and enjoying it--but I couldn't pass up the opportunity to take a picture of omija tea, which is a "five-flavor berry" tea that supposedly has the five tastes of sweet, sour, salty, bitter, and spicy. If you can't conceive of that, let me assure you, it is deliciously refreshing:

Five days was barely enough to explore these two cities, let alone the whole rest of Korea. There are so many incredibly wonderful things about Korea: the people's hospitality, the culture, the FOOD (lots and lots of barbecued meat! Oh! And check out this article on famous Korean drinks, yum yum). It's not perfect--Koreans' preoccupation with physical appearances, as evidenced by the constant barrage of plastic surgery ads in metro stations and diet pill commercials--but it's a culture that I definitely want to know more about, to better understand. Think I can go back for a longer period of time anytime in my near future?

Resting/reading at our lovely hostel, Lee & No. Guest House: