Today, Wednesday, June 15, was another very busy day as expected. I got very little sleep, also as expected. The headache persevered, though it was more just wondering what the smeg is wrong with me that caused me to wake up before 5 AM today. I tried to get back to sleep but that wasn't happening. So I got up and took the first of the vein constricting pills. Maybe they'd finally get rid of the headache. I had to take them with breakfast so I had some toast and jam with tea. It was raining so I bought a brand new umbrella on the way back to the Dong In Hospital. It's just about a 20-minute walk from my door. Very convenient.
I was supposed to see the vascular doc at 9:30, but I was greeted by one of the friendly staff who recognized me from the day before. I am pretty easy to remember. She told me that there was a computer malfunction and showed me a lot of patients in the chock-o-block full waiting areas. She said that the wait would be over an hour. So I went to the coffee shop and grabbed an Americano for about $2.50. I had had a cup of black coffee from the machine near radiology the day before. About 50 cents and it tasted like about 5 cents. The Americano was good though. Thing was, I didn't have a chance to really enjoy it. I was collected and taken to the doctor I had seen the day before. Instead of an hour wait, I had only about a 10 minute wait. The doctor told me that some other doctors and he had met and decided that the "small dilatation on my cerebral vessel" WAS more serious than originally thought, and worth doing further tests. That's an aneurism to you and me. Yeah. All those words are the absolute worst news I could have possibly received... except for that one word: SMALL. It's just a small bulge in my blood vessel. It reminds me of when you fill up water balloons and sometimes there's a weakness in your balloon and you get a little bubble that gets stretched so thin it's almost transparent. Sometimes it gets big enough to pop too. That is, as I understand, exactly what's going on with my cerebral blood vessel. It could get bigger and burst and that's how aneurisms kill folks. But the key word, I am assured, is SMALL. Who says you can't be very happy with a small bulge?
So he said that we will do the scheduled vascular checks at Dong In hospital and then I had to make an appointment to see a Dr. Yang Goo Hyun at the neurosurgery department of Asan Hospital. This is a bigger hospital and it was about a 10,000 won taxi ride away. I'm assuming Dr. Yang is a specialist. Like the Kia Tigers, Yang is the ace of the staff. The taxi ride is 10 or 11 bucks Canadian, but if you're Canadian, it's not a 2 block taxi ride, (which is what you get there for 10 or 11 bucks), it is about a 15 minute drive down the highway. I had told the boss I might work today if the headache meds did their job and I was finished by 3:30. Now I wasn't sure if I would be. So anyway, I got busy covering the breathing, sinus, chest and allergy bases. The doctor was a really nice lady who, again, spoke English very well. She had trouble with a few words but a couple of them I knew the Korean word, miraculously enough! I had a chest x-ray done and also a sinus x-ray. I also told her about the mold. She told me to clean it with "Rox" as they call it. It's bleach. I remember because I had a really hard time finding bleach to clean the mold. Mostly because this country, being so appearance based, automatically gives the verb for bleach in every translator I could find. I'll never understand why these lunatics want to whiten their awesome, brown skin. But anyway, I told her "Lox, or Rox" is bleach and I had used that to clean the mould the first time. Then I caught a cold. Next, after reading up on the stuff, I cleaned again, this time with vinegar. And I caught a cold. I've looked at the symptoms of mould sickness and I've got a lot of them. Headaches ARE one of them. But I could look up almost anything online and get paranoid that I have it.
She wrote down the idea of mould sickness so it's on the record. But the findings on the day are not yet consistent with serious mould sickness. Which is good, I guess, but I was hoping that the headaches would be caused by mould, not something more serious. She says she thinks it's some sort of allergy and gave me some pills to try to clear the sinus congestion in a week. The chest congestion is not serious, she said. So I go back to visit her next Wednesday and give her an update. Whether it's contributing to the headaches or not, it'd be awesome to get rid of the chronic head congestion! I can't breath through both nostrils when I sleep. Which contributes to less restful sleep, which contributes to all the other stuff. I sneeze and blow my nose 20 times a day even when I DON'T have a cold. All symptoms of mould sickness by the by.
So it was 1:30 I think when I finally finished and got all my little packets of meds from the drugstore and went home. I just put all my stuff on my desk and then got in a cab and went to Asan Hospital. I went to reception and showed the stuff they helpful people of Dong In Hospital had given me. This very nice man took me to his office and even though his English was very limited, we managed to communicate in both languages and do what needed to be done. I have an appointment Friday at 9 AM with Dr. Yang. The coolest thing was Dong In had given me a CD with my x-rays, CT scan and MRA all on it. I was looking forward to posting the MRA on here. It's a 3D map of the blood vessels in my neck and head. Very cool and quite easy to read. I saw the aneurism before the doctor pointed it out to me. Unfortunately I was able to see everything on my computer EXCEPT the MRA. It's opened with a program I don't have. I'll ask Dr. Yang how to view it when I see him on Friday cuz it would be something deadly cool to post on here!
So I get a call from the boss right as I'm finalizing things with the man making my appointment. I call him back a few minutes later and explain the whole deal. It's after 2 and I tell him I don't know if I'll be able to make it for the first class or not. So he drives out and picks me up. I got back with plenty of time to get ready and teach. And by this time the blood vessel constriction meds must have been working because for the first time in 2 days, NO HEADACHE!
Work was pretty easy today and Mr. Shim, the boss, wrote a little something on the corner of my whiteboard for the students telling them to go easy on the noise cuz I'm sick or something like that. See what I mean? They are pretty good here sometimes. Even with the mandatory hagwon shenanigans, they're pretty good. And on top of everything else, after I finished my 4th class the middle school kids were arriving. Mr. Shim told me he was just going to allow them to study for their midterms so I could go home and rest. They don't have their exams for two weeks. So I'll be going home early for two weeks. Better yet, I won't be teaching a couple of my least favourite classes for two weeks! And best of all, 4 hours instead of 6 for the next two weeks! YEEHAW!!! THAT might be just the medicine my aching head needed!
So right now I'm taking about a dozen pills a day for various things. The head is feeling fine though I haven't done much exercise other than walking and haven't had much stress since the last headache sent me to Emerg. I remain positive about Friday. It's actually a lucky thing that this little lump in my head was found. Not sure but I imagine this gives me more options that are better for me. Like possibly treating it or cutting it out or something. I've known two very, VERY good men who died almost instantly from massive aneurisms and if that was what I was in for had this bubble not been found, I think I prefer things this way.
As yet I don't really know how serious it is. It could be nothing, it could require an operation. There's no use worrying but tell my bulging brain that! I'll just have to be patient until Friday. And even THEN I don't know if I'll really get all the answers I'm after. No doubt it'll put another red mark on the bank book though. Which pretty much forces me to stay right here where the stress and fatigue and mould and all the rest may just be major contributors to this little dilatation. There's probably no way of knowing. But at least it'll be easier than expected to finish out the month of June.
I'll keep you up to date on whether I will need a lobotomy or not. Boy would THAT spice things up on this blog, eh?
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