klutzy May-June weekend

I've never thought of myself as clumsy, but when you factor in my immoderate and lazy behavior, accidents are almost bound to happen. 

I'm happy to announce that there have been no complications from my appendectomy. I'm completely healed. I have some hairline scars on my abdomen and some staple wounds which are still healing up, but apart from that I'm cured. I just need to avoid lifting heavy objects for six weeks.

I still think I'm going to die soon, though.  

I'm talking about last Friday night (May 30), when I was walking home—admittedly under the influence of makgeolli and beer—and stopped by a public restroom near the Yangjae Stream. The stalls were somewhat cramped, which I learned to my cost when I stood up somewhat abruptly and smashed my head against the toilet-paper dispenser. 

Just...don't ask. Please. It happened, all right? That's all you need to know. 

Anyway, my head was somewhat fuzzy (makgeolli or concussion, I don't know) so I didn't really notice that I had hit myself hard enough to draw blood. This precluded me from putting antibiotic ointment on my noggin, and...

...well, sure enough, I came down with a head cold on Saturday, May 31, which prostrated me all through Sunday. Even on this warm, damp, drizzly morning of June 2, I'm not still wholly back together. Infection-induced, no doubt. What a sap I am. 

And speaking of sap, what kind of moron doesn't use hot pads to remove a scalding-hot bowl of oatmeal from the microwave? Me, that's who. The same moron who, early this morning, touched the hottest part of the bowl, dropped the bowl, tried to catch the bowl and stuck both his hands knuckle-deep into said scalding-hot oatmeal. I am now typing on this keyboard with several first-degree burns on my fingers.

I hope there isn't a university-sponsored polo match this weekend, or I'm a goner. 

There isn't too much other news. Miss H and I went to see X-Men: Days of Future Past on Thursday evening, and both got a kick out of it. We also got our Hong Kong accommodations booked, so all the hotels 'n' stuff have been taken care of for my big Southeast Asia tour in July and August. (Now I just need to reserve my train tickets.) I had a lovely time with some of my work buddies on Friday night, drinking that aforementioned makgeolli and eating tofu (dubu in Korean) made from cactus in Achasan, near Gwangnaru, where Miss H and I used to live. Then I went to a barbecue in Maebong later that night with one of the dudes I brew with and his buddies, and nearly cracked my skull open in a public restroom around 12:30 a.m. Then I spent the weekend being sick. I'll spend the three days of my workweek (Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday) conducting writing assessments. On Thursday evening (which is technically a Friday, as we have a three-day weekend this week) I'll have a drink with Sang-ook, the Korean fellow I shared a ward room with when I got my appendix out a couple of weeks ago. I promise I won't hit my head on anything this time. 

No, really. Honest.

Korean appendectomy, part III: the end

The previous post's title was a little misleading. The "beginning" and "middle" parts of this tale covered only the first day—Sunday, May 18—and the hospital visits and surgical operations that were performed on that day. In this post I shall tell you about the three days that followed. "End" is something of a misnomer here, too: I'm still recovering. My abdomen aches a tad yet and I still have metal staples in my belly button. (Those get removed on Monday.) 

So: let's begin. Monday, May 19. The morning following my appendectomy.

A recovery ward room in a Korean hospital, similar to the one I stayed in (only way too big). Photo courtesy of Ask a Korean!, who has a rather interesting post on Korean healthcare.

I awoke at dawn. To my relief, I didn't have constant pain in my stomach anymore. The aches, however, were infernal. Sitting up took a good 30 seconds. I wasn't exaggerating in the last post when I said I felt like I'd done a million ab crunches, run a marathon and sung an opera without a drop of water in between. I didn't notice my hunger too much; I guess I'd reached that stage of starvation where the bellyache settles down to a dull, ignoble drone. I was, however, burning with thirst. Jeremy (my Korean roommate, remember?) ominously hinted that I might not even get a sip of water until the following day. Fortunately that proved untrue. At high noon, after a long dull morning of Jeremy watching bad daytime TV and me trying to plan the Thailand-Malaysia-Singapore leg of my Southeast Asia trip, lunch arrived: a bottle of ice-cold water. 

Splendid. Hospital dining at its finest. To be fair, it was a haute bottle of water: crystal-clear beads of sacred moisture gleaned from volcanic rock springs on the distant tropical island of Jeju, bottled by the purest maidens and spirited away to Seoul on the gossamer wings of azure dragons or some shit. 

Jeremy, on the other hand, was chowing down on a full tray. So I unfolded myself from my bed like a rusty pocketknife and hobbled to the door to call the nurse. 

"Shiksa?" I asked. "Lunch...?"

She explained to me on no uncertain terms that "Lunch water. Dinner food." 

Wow, she cleared that up for me in a hurry. Who needs verbs?  

At 5:00 a heaven-sent tray clunked down upon my rickety folding table: juk, sludgy plain rice porridge, accompanied by a bowl of spicy white radish soup and smaller bowls of soy sauce and crunchy vegetables in brine. I was to eat this exact same meal—the only variation of which was the type of soup—a further four times during my stay at Songpa Chung. It was bland, but substantiating, and it tasted like a king's feast after my 33-hour fast. 

Miss H finished work at 6:00 daily, but she'd obtained special permission to leave after her last class finished at 5:20. She arrived just after 6 p.m. and bore with her a load of mercy: orange juice, a huge jug of water, yogurt, and my laptop computer. I was past ready to see her. It had been a long, hot, sticky, muggy, sweaty day, and I must've looked and smelled as crusty as I felt. But she was her typical angelic self and made no mention of this fact. She and I spent several happy hours together, playing Monopoly on her iPad and casting the occasional glance at the utterly incomprehensible Vin Diesel film Babylon AD on the idiot box. 

I had contacted the assistant director of the General English Program at Sejong University by this time to inform them of my circumstances, and he had kindly canceled both my Monday classes for me. Tuesday, May 20, was a school holiday, and I never had any classes on Wednesdays. But Thursday I would have a full load, and my usual two on Friday. I still felt beat to hell. Time would tell if I would be okay to return to work. 

I wrote down some questions in Korean for the nurses and Miss H delivered them. It seemed that I would be released when my fever disappeared: a brace of nurses appeared at our ward room door every hour to check my, Jeremy's and Sang-ook's temperature and blood pressure. That could be Tuesday or Wednesday. I was informed that the surgeon himself would speak to me on Tuesday, the next day, and let me know either way. 

It was right about the time that Miss H had to leave (at 9:30 p.m.) that Jeremy and I got a new roommate, whom we would later find out was named Sang-ook. He was accompanied by a skinny, shriveled old bat with a hectoring voice and a face like thunder, whom I took to be his mother. She hardly spent any time by his bedside except to kvetch at him. "Poor sap," I noted in my journal. 

Just as Miss H was about to head out that Jeremy came back. He and his girlfriend had stepped out for a while. That is correct: Jeremy, in his hospital-issue PJs and with his clattering IV stand, had taken to the public streets. This is something done in Korea. No one looks askance at it. Countless times I have seen hospital patients, still in their whites, wandering zombie-like along sidewalks and storefronts. The first time was back in 2008, not long after I'd arrived on Geoje Island. Some bony middle-aged dude with a sour look was standing in his pajamas on a busy street corner, in the ridiculous plastic bath sandals they use here, IV stand by his side, smoking a listless cigarette. 

Anyway, Jeremy and his lady had been to a nearby juk restaurant. My faithful roommate promptly informed me that the hospital's official breakfast had been canceled on Tuesday morning for reasons unknown. He brought me and himself a huge heaping takeout portion of beef-and-vegetable rice porridge, plus sides. I nearly wept. What a guy. I had had Miss H bring him and his girlfriend a bottle of soju and a chocolate bar (respectively) to repay them for their kindness on Monday, when Jeremy had unhesitatingly given me some of his snacks and orange juice. Now they'd doubled down on me, the ungrateful bastards. I immediately fell to scheming about how to get even with them, generosity-wise. 

After a long, humid, stagnant Tuesday morning spent trying to call my mother on a phone card that Miss H had generously brought me, and finally getting through, I was ready to go home. I was fed up with lying still, trying to get comfortable on a rock-hard hospital bed and watching bad daytime TV with Jeremy and Sang-ook, who had the most arcane taste in comedy/variety shows. Not only was changing the bandages a painful thing, but the tube—

Oh, right. Didn't I tell you that I had a tube in my stomach? 

I did. I had three keyhole incisions, one on the bottom rim of my navel and two below it, right about on my waistline. The tube led into one of these waistline incisions. More embarrassingly yet, it emptied into a little plastic squeeze-bottle that was clipped to the stupid belly-band I and all the other recovering appendectomy patients had to wear. Looked exactly like the Velcro straps you'd wear to keep yourself from getting a hernia while lifting heavy objects. Anyway, this little squeeze bottle, the nurse explained to me, was to collect...er...seepage. Yes, seepage. Sure enough, there was a minute amount of blood and intestinal juices in it, which sloshed hideously whenever I moved. I tried to avoid looking at it. It reminded me so much of Bailey's and grenadine that I thought I might be put off bartending forever if I stared at the bottle for too long. 

Anyway, about 1 or 2 in the afternoon I went downstairs to have my bandages changed. The tube was taken out. It felt like they were pulling a tapeworm out of me. It was slitheringly uncomfortable and painful in areas that I'm too polite to mention. "Felt like my wang was being turned inside-out," I noted impolitely in my journal. 

The surgeon was present, however, and he answered my most immediate questions: I would be released upon the morrow, Wednesday. I could go back to work on Thursday if I felt up to it, and I had a follow-up appointment on Friday—at which time, I hoped, the metal staples that had been used to seal up my incisions in place of stitches would be removed. 

On Wednesday I was up early, ready to be liberated. The nurses handed me a note which they'd obviously gone to great lengths to translate properly, and which told me to avoid foods with flour, fizzy drinks, and alcohol for one week. Working, showering and "normal activities" were okay. 

Jeremy was out all morning. At about 10:00 a.m. Sang-ook looked over at me and said "When you go home?" 

I said, "I wish I knew," turned around, marched out of the ward room and down to the nurse's station. I asked them when I could be let go. They asked me when I wanted to be let go. I said, "Right now." They told me to go downstairs and settle up. I did. Then I hurried back upstairs, changed out of my PJs, put on my normal clothes, shook Sang-ook's hand, wrote Jeremy a note and wished him well, and fled the building. I took a jouncing, sickening cab ride back to the apartment, where I changed back into my (proper) PJs and collapsed. 

I didn't feel up to working on Thursday, so I sent out a mass e-mail asking my coworkers to cover for me. The response was overwhelming and heartwarming. I was able to take Thursday to recover, and went back to work on Friday. 

It's Sunday now, and I feel right as rain. I still have staples in my stomach. My Friday appointment was intended merely to change my bandages again. I get the staples out tomorrow, and not soon enough. The dietary restrictions shall lift on Wednesday, and I shall celebrate by having one of those hazelnut-vanilla ales that the boys and I brewed a few weeks back, which matured on Monday but which I was in no shape to drink. 

And that, ladies and gentlemen, was my Korean appendectomy. 

Whoof. 

Korean appendectomy, part II: the middle

Midsection, more like.

Were you wondering why my mind jumped to appendicitis so quickly on the morning of Sunday, May 18? Well, to be honest, I've always had a secret fear of the disease. It wasn't just that episode of Madeline that I mentioned, though it played a part. Ever since I was a boy, I've worried that I was going to get appendicitis. More precisely, I worried that I'd get it, wouldn't catch it in time, and die from it. As a lad, whenever I'd get a mysterious pain in my side, I'd panic and think that it was my appendix swelling up with toxic waste. Side stitches and gas attacks gave me undue pause. It was my worst and only venture into the world of hypochondria, and while I won't go as far as to say that it spoilt my childhood, it did put occasionally put a damper on things like playing sports, swimming, and eating baked beans.

Before we get back to the action, I think it's time I described the scene: Songpa Chung Hospital. 

What comes to mind when I say the word "hospital" at you? A big building with patients, right? 

Well, not Songpa Chung. Picture a surgical hospital specializing in appendicitis and hernias crammed into a skinny glass-fronted seven-story building with a single elevator and only four or five rooms per floor. The first-floor lobby doesn't have enough room to swing a cat in. The second floor does, but that's because the inner walls have been knocked down to create a reception/waiting room. The third floor has just enough space for an operating room and a...I don't know, bandage-changing room? The fourth floor has two ward rooms with three beds each, one male and one female, plus a recovery room with four gurneys, a nurse's station, and a unisex lavatory. Space is so limited that the microwave, water cooler, trash cans, and spare wheelchairs and IV stands are stashed in the corridor outside the elevator. As for the fifth, sixth and seventh floors...I couldn't tell you. Never got up that high. But I can imagine they weren't much different from their predecessors.

Now that I've set the scene, let's get on with the story.

I woke up in the most intense pain that I've ever known in my relatively short life. The first things I noticed, apart from the screaming, clawing agony in my midsection, was that I was on a gurney in the recovery room, the nurses were clustered all around me, Miss H was seated by my head trying to catch hold of my flapping right hand, and the clock on the wall read 10:40 p.m. I remember wondering why that was. I'd gone in for surgery at 9:00 and the procedure was only rumored to take 40 minutes. The extra hour left me with a sinister impression. I was too distracted by pain to take much notice of X-Files-esque time dilation, though. I was busy pounding the nearest wall with my left fist, thrashing about like a gaffed fish and screeching at my fiancée to go find whatever goddamn nurse was in charge of this cockamamie place and get her to cook me up the most powerful painkilling speedball on the pockmarked face of the earth, for the love o' Gawd. Finally, after barely three minutes of my bed-shaking, wall-rattling tirade, the near-panicked nurses stuck me with something. The anguish in my belly quieted down somewhat and I was able to converse like a normal human being. With saintly patience, Miss H and the nurses escorted me a few steps down the hall to the ward, where my roommate Jeremy—

Aw crap. I haven't told you about Jeremy yet, have I? I'll get to him in a minute. 

Anyway, the nurses helped me into the rock-hard hospital bed. I stretched out, bent and twisted and feeling like a scarecrow after a pack of flying monkeys had finished with him. Miss H never left my side. At no point during this debacle was the surgeon present or even visible. I imagined that he was likely at the nearest bar, smoking a fat stogie and reading the sports news or maybe getting some action from his pie-eyed assistant.

The most painful part of the whole affair was that Miss H wasn't dressed like this when I woke up.

After a time I was able to lie still and the pain, having lived a long, full life with a steady career and a loving family, decided to retire. I could still feel him down there practicing his golf swing, though. I managed to talk Heather into leaving at about a quarter past eleven. She had work in the morning, I argued. I would have happily had her stay the night, but I didn't like the look of the hard green cot underneath my gurney, nor had she any supplies, cosmetics or conveniences on her person. She didn't want to leave before I fell asleep, but I knew that sleep was a long way off for me. So she left and I was alone in a dark, stuffy ward room with no one but Jeremy for solace. 

Oh, that's right: Jeremy. I guess this is as good a time as any to talk about him. He was a Korean fellow, too old to be a student and too brassy and buoyant to be a salaryman. Like most young Korean men he was the perfect juxtaposition of physical fitness and frailty. He was tall, lean, muscular, and wore glasses. He had a deep, rich, resonant voice, and in pidgin English we got to know each other during our stint together in the hours leading up to my surgery, which he had just survived and I had yet to. I was encouraged by how hale and hearty he seemed so soon after the procedure: he didn't seem to be groggy or aching. 

Groggy and aching, however, was all I could manage during that long, dark Sunday night. I couldn't seem to find a position that was comfortable. My guts hurt in at least four distinct places. Only then did I notice that my throat was dry and I was ravenously hungry. I felt as though I'd done a million ab crunches, run a marathon and sung an opera without a drop of water in between. After an hour (two? three?) I managed to force myself to lie still. Whatever remained of the anesthetic in my system then took hold of me, and I slept until dawn. 

Learn about the long, dull, and somewhat sticky road to recovery in part III. 

shoot to thrill

If you want to witness miracles with any kind of regularity, don't go to a church. Go to a sports game.

(Yes, that's blasphemy. It is also true.)

The sports world is full of miracles. Maybe the fan favorite makes a game-winning three-point shot as the last buzzer sounds. Or your favorite team, the literal definition of downtrodden, participates in what some have called the greatest game in NFL history...and wins. The dying first baseman calls himself "the luckiest man on the face of the earth" in his farewell address to the fans.

It's enough to make anyone a believer.

And yet, I've never experienced one of these miracles for myself. Heck, I didn't even start seriously following a major sports team until recently, and even then, soccer and football (or, as I shall refer to them henceforth in this post, football and gridiron) are my only interests. Two or three seasons of gridiron games aren't enough to witness a miracle (especially when your team is San Diego; don't get me started).

Football (soccer), however...well, it deluged me with miracles from the very first. On my last day in England, two such miracles happened within minutes of each other.

So there I was. England. June 2010. Back in Newcastle after parting with Jeff in Edinburgh. There were a couple of big games coming up, which my English host Adam, his girlfriend Elaine, their friend Jay, and yours truly made sure to watch: England vs. Slovenia and U.S.A. vs. Algeria.

I need to give you the landscape first. As I mentioned previously, Slovenia had given the U.S. a disappointing draw a few days ago, and Algeria had handed England an even more humiliating 0-0. Now matters were switched. The U.S. would be taking on Algeria and England would have to pierce Slovenia. I was dreading the U.S. game all the more now that I knew the Algerian modus operandi: forget scoring, just block the opposing team. The ploy had proven horrendously effective. How would the American boys oppose it? My Geordie friends were feeling the same unease. They had seen how wicked the Slovenians were at blocking the ball. We were all big bundles of nerves. These were the last games before the Round of 16. If either England or the U.S. lost, they would not advance. That'd be it for us. We'd be dead, finished, out of the running. Everything came down to these two games.

Unfortunately, they were being played at the same time. The U.S. would face Algeria in Pretoria, South Africa, and England would play Slovenia in Port Elizabeth. This being England, and me being outnumbered three to one, it was the England game we watched. In between observing, I anxiously watched the ticker at the bottom of the TV screen for news of my fellow Americans.

The games were awful. It seemed as though neither side could gain ground. Twenty-two minutes went by as the valiant English offense battered away at the stubborn Slovenes. Before long, Gerrard, Rooney and Terry were bathed in sweat in the muggy South African air, and yet the scoreboard remained at nil.

Then it happened. Glorious relief. Jermain Defoe, a substitute striker, received a cross from Milner and bopped it into the Slovene goal with his shin. Yes. England was ahead. My heart soared for St. George's cross. The game went back and forth from there on out. Six minutes later, Milner and Defoe tried the same trick again but couldn't pull it off. It was so quiet that the announcers could hear the England fans quietly singing. After a few close goal attempts, the Slovenes were beaten back. The English ran down the clock as best they could while I chewed my nails, my eyes clinging to the ticker at the bottom of the TV screen. After 93 minutes there was still no score in the USA-Algeria game.

The English game ended. "God Save the Queen" rang 'round Nelson Mandela Bay Stadium. In Adam's mum's living room, there was jubilation. Adam and Jay were raucous, clinking cans of Carlson beer and rehashing the match in every detail. But they were good and sympathetic chaps. They patted my back, kept the TV on, and waited for news of my team.

And it happened again.

"News from Pretoria, the U.S. has scored against Algeria—"

The living room exploded. Adam, Jay and I leaped into the air, arms clasped about each other, yelling at the top of our lungs, the very air thundering with joy. Adam's mum stood there and grinned as the three of us worked off our overflowing emotions. The euphoria wouldn't let up. We'd been twice-blessed: each country had gone up against a seemingly unbeatable opponent, scored, and qualified for the next round. England had shut out Slovenia and the U.S. had beat down Algeria. Both teams were moving on to the Round of 16. In that golden afternoon, it was the best of all possible worlds.

And yet all good things must come to an end. The TV had hardly been turned off. The grins had not yet vanished from our faces. And yet the taxi was pulling up outside. It was time for me to collect my bags, ride with Adam to the train station, head to London, and spend a final 12 hours in that city before my flight to America the following morning. So it goes.

I said a heartfelt goodbye to Adam's mum and Elaine, threw my gear into the cab, and left. Adam and I soon found ourselves at the station. There was time enough for one more beer beforehand. Adam and I reaffirmed our friendship over a tall glass of suds, match recaps playing on every TV screen, travelers bustling past us. We chatted of this and that, loftily tossing around the possibility of another visit. That, I think, was the most bittersweet moment of them all. It was finally hitting me. I was leaving England. Who knew how long it would be before I saw all my crazy Geordie friends again?

The clock moved too quickly, as usual. I exchanged one last manly hug with Adam, shook his hand, hefted my knapsack over my shoulder, climbed on the train, and sat down. I gazed over the stained brick buildings of old Newcastle, the futuristic domes and bridges, the lush green trees and rolling hills. I stared into the gathering dusk and let out a hefty sigh. In that sigh were all the worries, dangers, adventures and joys I'd experienced during the past fortnight. (Two weeks! Lord! Had it only been two weeks?)

It didn't feel like quite enough. So I sighed again.

It helped ease the pain a little.

Adam and his lovely mum. Don't she rock that hat?

on the subject of hamstrings

Forget los cajones. The hamstrings should ascend to primacy as far as debilitating-when-injured body parts are concerned. Take out the hamstrings and you impair the function of the entire apparatus. I think most of us are familiar with the memorable scene in the movie Spartacus where Kirk Douglas "hamstrings" a Roman slave driver: biting him on the ankle, cutting through his hamstring and laming him for life. Well, there are other and far more painful ways of gimping yourself up, let me tell you. I have had a rather hostile relationship with my hamstrings for most of my life. I respect the fact that they let me cavort, prance, and mosey about, but as of this writing it seems that they're a lot more trouble than they're worth. I first ran afoul of them when I began to play soccer as a kid—after the first practice session of the season, after the 10-minute stretch routines we did before practice started, my hamstrings would protest mightily. Even today, I am forced to touch my toes a few times every morning to loosen the buggers up, or they'll torque my back the wrong way and my old sledding injury will flare up. My latest adverse encounter with my hamstrings wasn't caused by anything so grandiose as being attacked by a ruggedly handsome, sandy-haired quarry slave, nor even the noble sport of soccer. Nope, not at all. It was the jumping jacks that did it. Yes, the jumping jacks. I did three sets of 100 jumping jacks at around 9:00 p.m. on Sunday, shortly before I went to bed. Why was I doing jumping jacks at 9:00 p.m.? My metabolism, that's why. I have the metabolism of a nonagenarian tortoise. A few push-ups or pull-downs every day and a nice constitutional before dinner is about as strenuous as my exercise routine gets. But I had heard somewhere that working out before bed is a good thing. It heightens your metabolism just before your body shuts down for the night, meaning that you burn off some extra calories while you sleep, or something. What I hadn't been told was that working out before bed is nefariously bad for a good night's sleep. I had the most immaculately horrible night's sleep on Sunday of any night since I had the stomach flu. It seemed like every hour I was awake, tossing and turning. Add in that dry Mojave air which sucks moisture out of my mucus membranes faster than a vampire on a date, and I might as well have stayed up listening to conspiracy talk radio for all the rest I was getting. To add insult to injury (literally), I was sore the next morning. And I mean full body sore: my arms stung from flinging themselves over my head 300 times, my diaphragm ached from yanking my arms and legs into that ridiculous star shape, and my hamstrings...well, if anybody's invented a way to turn the Holocaust into a salve, they must have rubbed it on my legs that night. It's only gotten worse today. I had to get up at 7:00 to help my father return the big U-Haul truck, and then drive him to work. Upon returning home, I half-fell out of the Jeep and stumped to the front door like a—like a—my gait beggars description. Like a stork in splints. Sort of a ridiculous, stiff-legged waddle. Anything to avoid flexing my ankles and thereby setting my strained tendons on fire. As if a rough night and impaired locomotion weren't enough, today my mother and I are going to be shifting all the furniture that she and Dad moved home from Wyoming into its proper place. This includes things like desks, heavy dressers, and even a huge sheet of plate steel that Dad salvaged from Uncle Joe's house. That ought to work wonders for the ol' hamstrings, yes sirree. It took me by surprise, I must say (as Marvin Gaye sang). I've done thousands of jumping jacks in my 23.011 years. I don't lead the healthiest of lifestyles; in fact, I like to eat and drink until I pass out. But even so, sometimes I feel like I'm at war with my body. Darn thing's always giving me a pain here, or an ache there, or stiffening up on me like a frozen fish. I guess that's what it means to be out of shape. I'll grant you that I'm ten pounds overweight and haven't done a significant number of jumping jacks in something like five years, but come on. I'm not that out of shape. I don't deserve to be waddling about like an arthritic jaçana. Particularly not when I'll have to bend over soon and pick up a wad of plate steel.