Let's go out ...

It was Marissa's third Saturday in Korea and it was time to go out.

So we went to the Hospital.

Though I fell the day before, I waited for a day until I couldn't walk anymore. Finally it was time to go to the hospital.

Now there's plenty of hospitals here in Korea that have English speaking International Clinics, but I didn't feel like taking a cab.

So we get in and I'm able to point to my knee and say, "It hurts here," in Korean.

Now the fun begins.

The Korean hospital wasn't as clean as I would like, but it was much better than Antelope Valley Hospital, where I stayed for a few days in 2005 for pneumonia.

The emergency room there was like a triage unit, a large room about the size of a first story home in America. Approximately 20 beds were there in this room where people lay next to each other, no matter how severe their ailments were.

Next to me was a man who had his arm broken in what appeared to be an accident with some friends, who also were there with various broken appendages.

On the other side of me, the most priceless entertainment a man in pain could ask for: A dramatic Korean woman.

Marissa and I do not speak Korean. But we can still smell bullshit. This woman kept turning in her bed, moaning, waving her arms slowly in the air and over her forehead and swooning for the most hilarious drama I can recall.

I do know enough Korean to know what her doctor said to her when he walked over and said, "You just need to go home and rest."

In Korea, there is no such thing as doctor-patient confidentiality. Everyone is out in the open and everyone can see and hear what the doctor is doing to you and telling you.

That's when things got interesting and fun.

The fellas to my right were sending one of their more able bodied friends on a beer run. That's right. Hospital be damned, the dude was getting beer. Also, one of my favorite visuals from the Korean hospital, were people standing outside the entrance in the patient gowns, smoking cigarettes. Some even had IVs with them but they wanted to step outside and enjoy a nice smoke break.

That's commitment. One has to tip their hat to the Korean men smoking outside.

I managed to get patched up with a referral for an orthopedic doctor the following Monday.

All and all, it was a decent experience. I was in an out within 5 hours, which is just the waiting time for many U.S. hospitals. They had doctors on staff who spoke English and they correctly diagnosed me.

The only bad part was they put me in a whole leg splint that went from my foot to thigh and was held in place by bandages.

Fortunately the first orthopedic doctor I saw put me in a smaller splint which only went from the top of my knee to the middle of my calf.

Next up on LoughriedoesKorea.blogspot.com, the foreigners special Olympics ....