Swine Flu Prophesies...

Well, I’d been in Korea for nearly a month and a half with little medical issues to speak of other than a little intestinal abnormalities, but anyone who has spent more than five minutes with me knows that is a pretty normal thing. Sooner or later, my luck was bound to run out, I guess, and it turned out to be sooner rather than later.

I woke up yesterday morning with a dry throat, but because I tend to sleep with my mouth open (a very arousing image, I imagine) that isn’t terribly uncommon for me. After going for my usual run and hitting the shower, I headed out for work. I only had one class to teach because my evening one was cancelled as a result of the middle school exam period this week, so I was looking forward to a relaxing evening. About an hour into my three hour lesson, my nose began to start running. Then, almost instantaneously, a headache kicked in. Before the end of class, I was thanking the gods that I would be done for the day after three hours, because I was beginning to feel downright crappy. After doing a little bit of post-class paperwork, I headed home, watched some online television, had a long-awaited Skype session with Lavi, and then went to bed. When I woke up this morning, the headache was still present in force, along with an increasingly runny nose, sore throat, body aches, and a general feeling of worsening crapiness.

Now before I go on, I should take a few moments and update you all on the current state of affairs at my school in regard to illness. Since I stepped foot in Korea, I don’t think I’ve gone a day without hearing or being told something about H1N1, the dreaded swine flu. Before even leaving the U.S., for a little while it looked like my plans for the year might have to be changed because of swine flu’s high level of contagion combined with Asian governments’ tendencies to over blow pandemic scares worse than your average 12 year old girl’s fear of spiders. One of the reasons I had to arrive in Korea so much earlier than I was scheduled to start teaching was because of the country’s mandatory 9-day quarantine period for all people entering its borders. Even around other new recruits, I was forced to wear a medical mask for the entire week of my training course.

And things haven’t gotten any better since then. At my school, all students are required to have their temperatures taken by this ridiculous heat-sensing machine that looks more than a little like the first-person view from the original Predator. All faculty (me, included, of course) are required to take our own temperatures upon our arrival at school each afternoon. Before class, we need to sign out a bag containing a hand-held thermometer and face-masks from the front office, and then in the middle of each of our classes we are expected to make rounds and take each students temperature for a second time. If anyone has a fever or looks sick, we have been given strict orders from the higher powers to send the student home immediately. If all of these details haven’t proven it to you already, they are taking the swine flu very seriously here; in my first few weeks on the job, I got more emails about H1N1 and temperature-taking policy than I did about teaching.

So you can imagine that when I woke up feeling just about the whole list of flu-like symptoms from the CDC homepage, I thought it might be a good idea to tell my school about it. Because today was supposed to be my off, I called my faculty manager and asked him what he thought I should do. He recommended I come into work to check my temperature and see if I had a fever, and then from there go see a doctor to get some medication. I couldn’t tell if it was just because we were speaking on the phone, but he didn’t sound all that concerned.

I met up with my friend Andy and biked to school, laboring much more than usual in my condition. At school, I went immediately to the faculty management office and took my temperature: 34.2° Celsius, which translates to roughly 93.5° Fahrenheit. Suspiciously low, but not abnormal for the not-a-so-good thermometer I was used to using there. The other faculty manager at school seemed to take the faulty thermometer’s word as gold, though, hurrying me out of the office and informing me that I didn’t have to worry about the flu. On my way to the stairs, I passed by the Predator thermometer, so figured I would try my luck with it to see how close of a reading it gave me to the first. When I put my face up to the meter, the temperature immediately shot up to 38.4° Celsius, or 101.1° Fahrenheit. The machine then began to beep loudly, and I almost hit the deck, assuming some kind of alien killing machine was going to come out from the supply closet and hunt me down like I was Carl Weathers. “Holy Crap!” I thought. “That isn’t such good news!”

It took a few minutes of conversation with one of the school staff members to figure out that apparently the machine wasn’t working right and had a habit of doing what it did to me. Phew.

Not quite sure about what my temperature was but at least relatively confident that it wasn’t as high as the Predator insisted, I headed down the street toward an area where I was told that there were a lot of medical offices, apparently some place I could find an internal MD. While the average person might not see a doctor for a common cold back home, they don’t sell any real medicine over the counter here, so you have to see a doctor, even for some Benadryl. Having not yet insured myself healthilogically, I was a bit concerned about what the cost of that procedure might be, but I was assured by some Canadians that it would be cheap, at least in comparison to the "ridiculously" high rates we pay in America (I guess that’s the price of freedom).

Using my newly acquired ability to actually read Korean, I located a medical office on the fifth floor of one of the buildings and went up to get seen. After an interesting and vague interaction with the women behind the front desk, I was seated and told that the price might be “very expensive…as much as 20,000 won! [$20]” and that I would have to wait 30 minutes. I happily agreed.

I sat down and waited. Everyone who was there in the room before me was seen. Then everyone who had come to sit and wait after I’d arrived was seen as well. It was becoming clear to me that my foreign status was acting as a roadblock for my chances of receiving some medical advice. Just as I was about to make a fuss, one of the nurses came over and told me I could go in to see the doctor.

I spent about 20 minutes sitting with the doctor in his office. From the beginning, he made it clear to me that he didn’t speak English very well (something he didn’t really have to tell me), and our conversation was certainly hampered by that fact. Still, he was a really nice guy and was clearly exerting a lot of effort to try and make sure he understood my symptoms and his recommendations, so I have to thank him sincerely for that. Basically, he told me that flu and the common cold have basically the same symptoms, so it would be hard for him to know if I really had the flu without me going to the local hospital to get a blood test. He prescribed me a two day dosage of five different medications and sent me on my way.

On my way out of the office, I stopped at the front desk to pay my bill. Based on the conversation I’d had originally with one of the nurses, I was expecting a tab of around 20,000 won. I took out my wallet, and the woman behind the counter said a number in Korean that I didn’t understand, then held up three fingers. 30,000? Okay, a little higher than she’d promised but still reasonable enough. I handed her my credit card and waited for the receipt. When she handed it to me and I looked at it, I almost fell over. The bill wasn’t 30,000 won; it was 3,000. As in roughly $2.50. For an uninsured visit to the doctor! I mean, how ridiculous is that? I’m not exactly sure what the pricetag would have been back home, but I have to imagine at least ten times that. I went across the hall and got my prescription filled for 5,600 won, bringing the grand total of my medical expenses for a rather nasty cold to…8,600 won. Wow. That is all I can say. Wowwy wowwy wow.

As it turns out, it probably is a good thing that they keep those cold drugs behind the counter; I’m not sure what exactly they gave me, but it took only three doses and about 12 hours for me to be feeling nearly symptom free from what I mentioned was a worse-than-average cold. Korea: the home of ridiculously cheap and potent healthcare services. Who knew?!