My first experience with socialized medicine

Busan, Korea, July 25, 2011

So, I had my first real experience with socialized medicine today. Let me tell you how it went.

First, I gotta go back. Back in time to… last week. I noticed about last Wednesday that I was having trouble hearing out of my left ear. For a couple of days, it really bothered me. I kept pinching my nose and trying to blow out the whatever--it-was that was clogging up my ear. By Friday, I thought it was getting better. I could kind of hear alright. By Sunday morning, however, I knew something was wrong.

About two summers ago I got an ear infection. I know where it came from. I was swimming under the waterfall (okay, I know it's just a spillway from the Spring Lake dam, but it's effing beautiful, and I like to call it a waterfall) in San Marcos. Cool, clear water comes flowing over that spillway night and day, and I used to love diving under the waterfall, looking at the fish, and holding my breath as long as I could.

Anyway, this one day I came up right underneath the spillway, and got sprayed with some high pressure water. The same thing happened then that happened last week: I got some water in my ear, and I couldn't get it out. After about a week, I had a serious ear infection on my hands, and I actually ended up driving down to the Audie Murphy VA hospital in San Antonio and sitting in the emergency room for 5 or 6 hours just to see the doctor for 5 minutes and get some antibiotics.

This time, I didn't really notice what caused my ear to get clogged. I guess it was at the gym. I briefly dunked my head under water in the hot tub before I got out to take a shower one day. That must have been it.

When I woke up Sunday morning and my jaw hurt, I was concerned. I tugged at my ear. That hurt too. I was pretty sure, at this point, that I had an ear infection. I wasn't sure what to do about it. Here in Korea, anyone who is slightly ill is told to "go to the hospital". I think that they don't distinguish between the hospital, emergency room, and doctor's office/clinic the way we do. So I called my co-teacher and my supervisor (who speaks very limited English) to try to figure it out. I eventually decided that the best thing for me to do was get up Monday morning and go to the clinic that's in the same building as our school.

I got there this morning at about 11:05. Coincidentally, one of my students (June, a 3rd grader) was walking into the building at the same time as me. I talked to him for a minute, we got on the elevator together, and we both got off on the second floor… then both walked into the clinic. It turns out that his mother works at the clinic, and she was at the front desk. That made my life a little easier, as he took on the task of translating. I showed them my Alien Registration Card (that's what it's really called), they entered my information into the system, and my student showed me in to see the doctor, about 5 minutes after I walked into the clinic with no appointment. The doctor apologized for his limited English, (which wasn't that bad, he definitely knew the word "infected") put the microscope-thingy in both of my ears, typed something in the computer, and then sent me back to the front desk.

The woman working the front desk had me sit down to a machine that was like an infrared heat lamp for my ear, I did that for 3 minutes, then they handed me my prescription and charged me my copay, w12,000 (about $10 US). So far, so good. My student then walked me down to the pharmacy on the first floor, where they gave us each a candy and filled my prescription in another five minutes. By 11:30 I was at my desk, drinking a bottle of water and taking my first round of antibiotics.

Socialized medicine: not too bad. Now I wonder if Rush Limbaugh was lying to me all those years that he said it was a back door to communism.