However, since I signed my contract, (her emancipation proclamation), she has been like a person released from prison on a technicality, posting pictures of the things she sees and appreciates every day almost as if they were unavailable to her for, oh I dunno, say about two years. And to be honest, I expect I will be the very same when and if I get out of this toxic environment. There's no way I will have been here for two years so there likely won't be any "Hooray for Mondays" posts on facebook forthcoming, but the air will smell sweeter and the grass will be greener to be sure!
So this one's going out to Anne: Here's how MY Monday was!
Saturday had been another entire day with a headache. Again suddenly brought on by exercising, raising the heartrate. It came on throbbing almost as bad as the push-up headache last Monday. The serious pain lasted about as long, 4 minutes or so, but it didn't go way down as fast. Stronger pain continued for a longer time. My whole body got weak, I got sick to my stomach and actually threw up a few times. I promised myself to go to the doctor the next day. But after a whole day of what felt like an extreme hangover, it got better. By Sunday I was still feeling a reminder of the pain in my head, but I got out and went shopping. I went to the pharmacy I was at on the Tuesday after the first headache and the congestion symptoms came on. On Tuesday I had been met there by a kind lady who spoke English well, but nonetheless I related my sinus and chest congestion to her in Korean. I also brought along a couple of other products to refill, foot spray and Gaviscon for heartburn/reflux. I totally forgot to get Aspirin! So the lady gave me some pills for the congestion saying, "Take one of these three times a day after meals." In English, bless her cotton socks! I don't know if the pills worked or not but I took them all at the rate she prescribed and I made it through my three-day week. I only had a relapse on Saturday after the pills were gone. So Sunday I went in for Aspirin and the guy there was a shining example of why I am so scared to go to the hospital.
I walk in and he's hobnobbing with about 6 other ajushis congregated around the counter. He puffs out his chest and in an exaggeratedly loud and authoritative voice says, "How can I help you? Or can you speak Korean? What would you like?" Since I think "Aspirin" is the same in both languages, I said in English, "Well, I need some Aspirin." He reaches onto the shelf behind him and says, "Aspirin, something like this?" and hands me a little box bearing none of the signs of Aspirin that I recognize. I opened it up and on the tin foil part of the pill packages I read, "Bayer." So I said, "Yup, this looks right." He then says, in the same even-if-I'm-wrong-you-have-to-believe-me voice, "Take one of these three times a day after meals." He knew absolutely nothing about why I wanted the Aspirin, but this was his firm assessment of my medical condition. Exactly like a lot of Korean doctors I have visited and heard stories of. Maybe he was trying to impress his buddies with his English skills.
Anyway, I took TWO of the Aspirin, not after a meal and they did the trick. For the first time in over a day, even the reminder headache was gone. I woke up Monday and still felt okay. Not perfect, but I had my Aspirin and I had my lessons planned for the week. So, off to the old salt mines I went. The first couple of classes were fine, but I started feeling a headache again. So I ate half a sandwich and took two Aspirin. Through the 3rd class the headache started getting worse and I started to feel some stomach issues. Just as the 4th class started I needed to go to the washroom. Suffice to say that THIS time the pounding headache was not set off by exertion, it came on while I was taking a leak! And this time the pounding lasted a bit longer than the 4 minutes. I'd say about 10. I was sweating profusely too. I went back to the classes, got Mr. Shim out of his classroom and told him I needed to go to the hospital. He was nice enough to drive me.
At the hospital I told the emergency doc much of the story, but, of course, not the entire thing. He did what I expected and immediately, which was unexpected. I gave them some blood and they gave me a CT scan. Then after the cat scan I was hooked up to an IV. The curse of having deep veins! It took two nurses 4 fumbling and kind of painful attempts to get an IV into a vein. They gave me a bag of what I assume was saline and a shot of something I think the doc said was to calm the nausea. After the boss had returned and I was in a bed in Emergency, while one of the nurses was messing around with the first attempt at finding a vein, I needed to throw up. I said to her in Korean and English that I needed to throw up. She couldn't do anything because the needle was in and blood would have shot out the catheter if she released pressure. But I insisted as nicely as I could then started dry, (luckily), heaving. Another nurse grabbed what she could find. I was on about my 6th dry heave and the pre-spits were coming up and I was swallowing them down, when I was given a pink, piggy shaped puke pot. What else can I say here but, OINK? I never did throw up. I think maybe the humour of the situation helped.
Anyway, the cat scan was negative, the blood test found everything absolutely normal except for high numbers in the fatty liver department, but not alarmingly high, just higher than ideal. I already knew about that. I mentioned the black mold and the doctor didn't seem to understand what I meant. He said fungus, but I think he thought I meant I had a fungus. I'm still not convinced the moldy apartment isn't at LEAST a contributing factor here. But he said he reckons these are exertion headaches and they are getting better and will eventually go away. I challenged his diagnosis by saying that the headaches were lasting longer and longer and being brought on by less exertion. A piss? That's not exertion! But he authoritatively stuck to his diagnosis. 80,000 won later I am at home with some drugs that he says will take the pain and nausea away if taken, you guessed it, three times a day after meals.
I took the first packet of pills after my dinner last night and had a night of fitful sleep. I was up several times, each time noticing that the headache had not yet disappeared. In fact it got worse every time I woke up. Now it's early in the morning, (up before 7 AM), and I still have a headache. So, yeah, happy Monday to me!
Now it's Tuesday. I, and two of my friends that know this whole sordid story, believe it's stress. I wish I could be more like Anne and forget about the little shits and concentrate on the good kids at work. I wish I could maybe force out of my mind the ridiculously bad luck of the past several years, getting screwed out of two jobs by unscrupulous business practices, the disappointments that amassed while in my own country that have made me a virtual refugee from it, yeah it'd be nice to just be able to take joy in all that suffering. But I'm not quite there in my journey to self-actualization and spiritual enlightenment yet.
So let's move on to some other things I find it hard to take joy in. I admit to being a bit of a Facebook junkie. I have a very limited social life here by choice. I don't want lots of friends because I want to use as much of my money as I can paying bills and debts at this time. So Facebook has to suffice. But something that I have found infuriating is the way heartless people will take a tragedy and LONG before the tears have stopped, use it to further their, (almost always), idiotic causes. Not long ago it was the fucking oil company flunkies just hours after the Fort Mac fire evacuations using Facebook to post their severely misguided memes about how the oil industry had cleaned up the city's excessive oil that needed to be harvested because it was harming the environment and how the oil industry had made heroes of the citizens of Fort McMurray. Now it's the anti-Muslim, anti-gun control, hateful shit twisters who are using the Orlando shooting to further their causes. "The gunman was a registered democrat, but just watch how republicans and gun lovers, (poor us), will be blamed." "He supported ISIS, but just watch how the media will blame things on automatic weapons." "Automatic weapons are not the problem. OBAMA is the problem!" "France banned fully automatic weapons and how's that workin' for them?" And now, for the most idiotic of all:
Because a 104-person shootout woulda been the way to go.
Probably the most interesting of the bunch, to me, is the way some people who hate Muslims are reacting. From my unprofessional research I've found a positive co-relation between Muslim and gay hatred, yet, I am seeing anti-Muslim activists, whose cause is on the decline I believe, clutching for this frilly, rainbow life preserver no matter how reluctantly. "A Muslim guy dislikes gay people so all Muslims want to exterminate gays. Let's get 'em!" It might be funny if it weren't so alarmingly ignorant.
Work, the internet, stupid people, ignorance, they're ALL huge headaches!
Addendum: It's now 1:30 Tuesday. The boss has asked me to teach at least 2 classes today. From 3:30 - 5:30. I told him that I had to go back to the hospital today. They wanted to keep me at the hospital for observation yesterday but I didn't want to pay for that. I told the doc I'd go back in today for follow-up. I said I'd get back to the boss after I found out what's on the schedule for me today. I have to get an MRA test at 3:00. That's to measure my veins and see if I might have an aneurism. I thought the CT scan could find them. Live and learn. As yet I still have a bit of a headache and I've now taken 3 of the pill packets the doc gave me yesterday. My new doctor, whose name I wrote down and somehow lost, explained that if it's not this, which it probably isn't, there are two other options. One is migraines, which are treatable and the other is something else. I didn't quite understand, but he said they are treatable too. I asked if it could be stress and he seemed much more supportive of that idea than the other doc was of the mold suggestion. At any rate, I'm guessing that after this, maybe tomorrow, we'll do tests for other stuff and hopefully get to the bottom of this. And the bottom of my bank account. This MRA is costing me about 200 bucks!
Addendum to the addendum: That MRA machine, Magnetic Resonance Angiography, was a trip! Not for the claustrophobic, lemme tell you! You go into a tube and all sorts of weird noises happen. It lasted longer than I expected. The results were pretty cool! A sort of computer map of the blood vessels in my neck and head. I expected they wouldn't find anything, but the doc showed me the picture, which rotated and moved in any way he wanted, and there was a lump on one of my blood vessels in the anterior area of my neck I think it was. A bulging blood vessel. Probably it's just that my blood vessels are as muscular as the rest of me. At any rate he said it was something, but it wasn't serious. So that was a relief. Then he said that the pain in my head was, indeed from swollen blood vessels. They get more blood to the brain, the brain expands, presses on the skull, throbbing pain. So he says to me, "You must avoid cardio vascular exercise." I had to get him to repeat that. Avoid exercise? Really? Next you're going to tell me to eat more pizza and drink more beer! It turns out that beer, in moderation, IS a good idea! It constricts the blood vessels and improves circulation. So my doctor has basically told me to stay home, watch the ball game and drink a couple of beers! See? I KNEW I was living right!
It's not so simple, unfortunately. I asked him if the expansion is because the brain isn't getting enough oxygen and he said yes. I told him, and actually SHOWED him my chest congestion that I have had since coming to Gangneung and mentioned that I am not as afraid of exercise as I may look. I have noticed that with this congestion, cardio is harder. The beginning of that hike is a killer and leaves me more out of breath than I think is healthy sometimes. I thought this might have to do with the chest congestion, but I thought that might just be because I was out of shape or getting old. He immediately set me up with an appointment tomorrow with a vascular specialist. I will probably be tested for allergies, sinus trouble and maybe even the mold by him or her. Who knows how much THAT's gonna cost? But I think we're zeroing in on an answer here. Probably I'll be paying 500 bucks to find out exactly what I have suspected all along. We will find out at 9:30 tomorrow morning. Until then I got some medicine that will constrict my swollen brain. But I can't take it until tomorrow! I STILL have a headache! Maybe I'll just self prescribe myself a couple of beers. Ahhh medicine!
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