Korean Hospitals, Part II: Rules that Should Be Rules

In contrast to the rules listed in the last post, which are in effect, my stay in the hospital resulted in a new list of guidelines that I firmly believe should be instituted, particularly on Hall 8B, as soon as humanly possible. We’ll call these the DB rules, well, because they’re brilliant and I don’t mind lending my initials to brilliance. (This also helps anyone just joining us from confusing the actual rules with the rules that should be actual rules but aren’t.)

DB Rule #1: You must sleep in your bed the right way round. This means your head should line up with the heads of the people beside you and your feet should all face toward the center of the room. The Stinker next to me slept the wrong way around all day every day and often positioned herself on her left side, with her back facing me. This strategically aimed her butt in the direction of my face. This woman was Champion when it came to meeting the Passing Gas Standards. And so, every so often, my air supply would become polluted with The Stinker’s generous wind. I had no recourse. Why? Why aim your guns at me? What did I ever do to you? And she wasn’t even that sick. She could walk, and burp, and fart, and eat really loudly, and even got her drip removed the second day I was there! What? You’re not on a drip? Surely you’re well enough to go home. So, stop pointing that thing at me, turn around the right way, and be more environmentally conscious to your fellow patients.

DB Rule #2: Put All Almost-Deaf People in Their Own Room. Outside of the orchestra of snoring and farting that played all night, there was the Screaming Ajumma. She was General Disturber of the Peace. She was one of the caretakers common to Korea that are hired by the family to live in the hospital with their loved one while they are sick. These women are strong and coarse, and should be so in order to do their job. They sleep on cots next to the hospital beds, change diapers, hoist ancient, limp bodies into wheelchairs, and force a lot of food into ailing senior citizens. But the yelling? Oh, God. I have uber-sensitive hearing that makes sleep hard for me on a regular basis. My fridge makes noise, something shifted in the trash, a door 20 rooms down opened and closed. That kind of thing. This woman was like 10 feet from me and if I had been blind, would have sworn she spoke through a bullhorn. And the Screaming had no time limits. 2 a.m. and you just drifted off? Too bad. Screaming Ajumma needs to fluff a pillow or make Deaf Old Lady swallow a pill or turn over. Put ‘em all in the same room and let ‘em scream themselves hoarse. Sleep is essential to recovery and healing. Sleep is impossible with Screaming Ajumma. You do the math. And write your Congressman.

DB Rule #3: Sort patients according to the severity of their condition. Put happy, healing patients altogether. Put grumpy, pain-ridden patients together. The way it is now, the Happy are way too Happy because they compare their slight issue to those of the really ill and think how great it is to be them and this makes them even happier and more annoying. And those of us seriously experiencing pain are not allowed to wallow and writhe in peace, but must feel doubly sorry for ourselves because across the room is a woman who could, for all practical purposes, go shoe shopping and eat donuts. The jealousy factor prolongs pain, in my expert medical opinion, and also induces Rage, which increases pain and decreases already negative pain thresholds. True misery. Put the Happies on a ward so they can laugh and tell jokes together. Put the Weenies Who Can’t Handle It together so they can stop burning with jealousy and focus on getting well.

DB Rule #4: NO PLASTIC BAGS. AT ALL. EVER. Every person who came to visit, every Screaming Ajumma, and even Kenny’s mom carried everything in a freaking plastic bag. The sound of rustling plastic bags is already annoying on a normal not-a-patient-in-a-hospital day. But being confined to a bed, already feeling like you’re going to puke, and listening to the crackle and crinkling of plastic for 5 MINUTES STRAIGHT (oh, it feels much longer than that) is unbearable and makes me crazy. And why is it that you can’t ever just stick your hand in and pull out what you want? You must rearrange everything inside the bag, take it all out, do elaborate origami figures with the bag, try to iron the wrinkles out of the bag, rub the bag between your hands as if you were going to start a fire with it, put all your items back in the bag, shake the bag, tie the bag, forget you need something else and repeat the entire process. Plastic bags in every day life are not so noticeable. Plastic bags at 4:30 a.m., although muffled somewhat by the “orchestra,” are like bombs detonating in your pocket. Please, on behalf of all hospital patients around the world, leave the plastic bag at home. Or, put all the plastic bag carriers in a different room. I’ll take the Green Room, which shuns all plastic bags and only uses handmade hemp carriers to transport our goods.

Can you tell that I’m all about sorting things according to like properties? I believe that in some cases, this is called prejudice. But in this instance, I firmly believe that it is common sense and for the good of the masses that must reside in Korean hospitals for any amount of time.

Korean Hospitals, Part I: The Cycle

I went to the doctor on a Wednesday during my lunch because I wanted to go home and sleep and I had to have a doctor’s note to prove that my stomach really did hurt before the boss would let me leave. So, I wandered into the office, thinking maybe I could get some kind of pills to help me sleep (I’d been having severe insomnia) and maybe some Tums. But when the doctor started pushing The Belly, she drew her eyebrows together and made this noise that only Koreans make which is sort of a questioning little spurt of air over the tiniest quadrant of vocal chord. Then she kept asking me if I was sure it hurt when she pushed there. “Um, YEEEES. THERE. YEP. You got it. Okay. THAT’s it.” And I wondered why, with all my positive affirmation, she needed to go on pushing that spot as if it was the Staples Easy Button and she had run out of Post-Its and copy paper on the same day.
She called another doctor. They conferred in Korean. Second doctor proceeded to push The Belly and confirm that it was indeed painful, “Here?” I just groaned. I thought, “Dang, I’ve got a really bad case of gastritis. Maybe they’ll give me something for that.” And the doctor said, “It seems that you have acute appendicitis.” And, that, ladies and gentlemen is how this whole shenanigan began.
I proceeded to go back to school and wait for the boyfriend to come pick me up from work and take me to the hospital for tests and x-rays to make sure. That only took 5 hours. Then, I changed hospitals, going to the ER of one closer to his house so he and his mom could look after me.

Korean Hospital Rule #1: You must be hooked up to a drip. It doesn’t matter what you came in for. They hook you right up. They made me pee in the cup and then took a few x-rays, which allowed me to catch a quick glimpse of the amazing amount of fat I’ve managed to stack upon my rather petite bone structure. (A bit depressing for the Chubb-O.) Then they promptly hooked me up to not one, but two different drips. I was a mess of chords before they even cut me open! The coffee shop in the lobby looks like a medical forest with plastic baggy leaves hanging limply from short metal limbs. Outside the entrance, patients populate the sidewalks and breezeways, dragging their gangly baggage, a mess of blue hospital -issue fashion-wear and long, snaking tubes curving around legs, arms, and torsos.

I had surgery Wednesday night. I think I came out of the recovery room and into a regular room around 1 a.m. Thursday morning. I was tired, but I was on my back, so sleep didn’t come quickly or comfortably. I dozed a bit, bothered by the snores of the other patients in my shared room. If I didn’t move, I was okay. I waited for morning, because when morning comes, THEY FEED YOU! Woohoo. I hadn’t had anything since Wednesday morning, and it wasn’t even food, just a small coffee from the Family Mart. So, needless to say, this Chubb-O was in a serious state of Hungry. Not to mention thirsty because I hadn’t had anything to drink since that coffee either. Kenny arrived to replace his mom as my caretaker around 9 or so. (All night, I just asked his mom what time it was.) And that is when The Cycle started:

The Cycle: You Must Pass Gas ASAP. This is the only thing of any concern to your doctors. This is the only question they will ask you in English. The rest of the stuff, they blab to your boyfriend’s mother or your boyfriend in Korean. In order to Pass Gass, you must “try ambulation,” i.e. walking. In order to walk, you must get up from your hospital bed and move around without puking your guts up. In order to not puke your guts up, you should have a bit of food on your stomach before they pump your body full of antibiotics. In order to have a bit of food on your stomach, you have to eat something. But, going all Catch-22, you can’t have anything to eat until you Pass Gas.

I have never tried to fart so hard in my life. I have also never been nauseous for hours on end before. Kenny tried to get me to stand up. I did everything super slow, maybe taking 2 or more minutes at each stage before making it to my feet. 6 times we repeated this process of me finally standing up and then promptly lying back down before I doused everything in whatever it was my stomach could find to reject. I only actually threw up once, and I definitely thought I would then pass out from the pain in The Belly. Poor Belly. (Poorer Bellybutton. They did a laproscopic procedure to remove my appendix instead of just cutting me open on the side. They went through my Precious Bellybutton and in two other tiny spots under the waistband of my low-rise undies.) After trying this a few more times, without throwing up, I finally stood up and walked to the bathroom and quickly sat on the toilet. I peed. I waited. I waited some more. Nope. No gas. I returned to my bed defeated by my digestive system’s refusal to cooperate.

A few hours later, I felt something. I felt something moving in there. I felt that perhaps it was slowly shifting towards daylight, towards the outside world. So I focused, people. I willed whatever it was to GO! GO! GO! And the world’s smallest puff of air escaped. I have never rejoiced over a fart before, except maybe for the ones expertly detonated in the vicinity of my sister’s face, and or the dinner table. Kenny ran to tell the nurse. He came back with a look on his face that wasn’t good. He said, “It didn’t count.”
“WHAT! I worked so hard for that fart! Who is she to say it didn’t count? She wasn’t even here!” Oh the Rage! But it had to be more than one. Apparently gas is more plural than I thought. And it should be lengthy. A true escape. Ugh.

Korean Hospital Rule #2: Your Farts Have to Measure Up to Proper Fart Standards. It can’t be just any gas that decides to pass your way.

I eventually did “Pass” the test. But I didn’t break The Cycle until they took me off the antibiotics. I would be okay for a few hours and then I would just feel awful for a few more hours. Friday night I started to feel good. I sat up and walked around more and watched some TV. My Kiwi came to see me and I am convinced that talking and visiting with her is what propelled me toward recovery. I was discharged on Saturday morning.

The End? Of course not. This is only Part I!