April in Korea

This is a blog about my time teaching in Korea.

Name:
Location: Raleigh, North Carolina

Monday, August 07, 2006

How I Spent my Summer Vaccation

I spent my summer vacation in Asan Hospital from July 30th until August 1st getting surgery.

So if you didn't know, I had an appendectomy back in September, and one of the stitches didn't heal right, so I had a hernia right above my belly button. So I needed to have surgery to fix the hernia, and I figured since it would be cheaper to get it done in Korea, I went ahead and scheduled a date.

It was a very difficult process, since no one spoke English well, and I don't speak Korean. A couple of times, I did have a Korean friend, Ashley, who helped translate between the doctors and me. But other than that, I was left to fend for myself. Other than that everything went smoothly, except for the lack of good pain medication. It wasn't an entirely horrible time since my friends came and visited often and kept me company, even if I didn't respond much.

For the rest of the week, however, all I did was lie around in pain and watch movies. But it was worth it, because the surgery, and all expenses (2 nights in the hospital), came out to be $756. Yay for Korean health care.