Anybody got a chainsaw?

(This picture is two days after the recent unpleasantness. Six stitches lurk under the bandage.)

On the brighter side, I've found out that the prices here for healthcare and the services rendered can be amazing.

When they took me to the hospital, they cleaned me up, examined me, took x-rays, stitched me, gave me an antibiotic shot and wrote me a prescription. Out-of-pocket cost: $19. Cost of one day's pills (nine pills in all): $2.

Each of my follow-up visits: in and out in 15 minutes, checking the stitches, short consult, change the dressing, new prescription: $3.20.

I went to replace my glasses today; I picked out a titanium frame, which is very very thin and tough. The total cost in the States, even at Wal-Mart, would have exceeded $300. Here? Eighty-six bucks. I could have had them in ten minutes, but since I'm astigmatic, they had to order the lenses. At home, it would take a week. I'll pick them up tomorrow.

(Now, if you see the guy in the photo in your neighborhood, lock up your daughters, your sons, and your small animals... and hide the sharp objects.)

...I broke my face.

I fell on my head-- on the sidewalk, after the hike!-- and got taken to the hospital for x-rays and stitches.

Upon demountaining, I walked a quarter-mile to the first pick-up point for the bus; the second stop is right where you come off the mountain, but I wanted to make sure to get a seat. I stopped at the men's room and resumed walking to the bus stop, carrying my daypack and my walking stick in front of me. Why? I don't know.

Then the bus turned out of the parking lot (not visible from where I was) where the drivers take their breaks, and I started to sprint for the bus. I got within thirty feet...

I've been meaning to post about how if Korea were America, there would be lawsuits flying around faster than character assassinations at a McCain rally. There are loose paving stones, little stumps of what once were signposts, concrete pillars below knee level... I always thought somebody was going to get hurt.

Somebody did. The sidewalk in the little town by Palgongsan is made of square bricks, maybe a foot across. A couple of them were sticking up an inch or two. Running as fast as I could, I caught my toe on one and pitched forward at an impressive velocity. I remember a split-second thought: this is going to be embarrassing, almost falling in front of the people waiting for the bus. My next thought was: look at all the blood.

I fell on the left side of my face, broke my glasses, cut my lip a little, scraped my hands, ripped and bled all over my t-shirt (I guess I'll have to go back to Jax and run ANOTHER Gate River Run), broke my watch strap, and laid open my face next to my left eye pretty good.

Luckily, I had an angel. A Korean man about to get on the bus came over to see if I was okay, wiped off as much blood as possible, using paper towels and his drinking water, stayed with me, tried to tell me where I was bleeding from (though as he had no English...), let me call Heeduk on his cell phone, and called an ambulance. I was getting so frustrated that I couldn't tell him how wonderful he was to me. I just kept saying "kamsamida" a lot, and shook his hand and bowed from the waist when the ambulance came. He must have taken 45 minutes to help me.

Hey, at least I didn't have to pay for the bus fare home. It's a long ride back to town, even in an ambulance, and I was embarrassed that I wasn't really hurt badly enough to have one come all the way out for me. George from school met me at the hospital and helped walk me through everything. At least I got a doctor with fair English.

The doctor determined I had only contused my shoulder (yeah, that's a word. It is now, anyway.) He either didn't consider that I might have, or determined somehow that I didn't have, a concussion, and sent me for x-rays in case I broke my crown.

As Yogi Berra said, they x-rayed my head and found nothing.

Then they stitched my up. I must say it's disconcerting to be lying there with a mask over your face while people work with a needle an inch from your eye and say what I'm pretty sure was "oops" in Korean. The doctor said the laceration was narrow but deep, and that he would do his best but couldn't promise it wouldn't leave a scar.

You know, it doesn't sound so bad having a pretty Korean woman telling you to take down your pants, but it turned out to be a pain in the butt.

I'm supposed to take three pills three times a day, use an icepack 15 minutes on and 15 off, and go back to the hospital every day so they can check the stitches, and for the next few days, get antibiotic shots. Meanwhile, now it's time to go to work and for some reason I have a headache.

...if I hadn't decided to go to the farther bus stop, if I hadn't stopped to use the bathroom, if I hadn't been wearing my brand-new hiking boots instead of my running shoes, if this country bothered to fix the sidewalks, if I hadn't been carrying my gear in front of me so I couldn't see the pavement... ah, well, why dwell? I fell. What the heck.

Kind of ironic, negotiating a rock-strewn, root-laced mountain only to split my face on a sidewalk. That was my day, from 1 to 3 a.m. US Eastern time. Was that two hours as interesting for you?

Here's something you don't want the hospital to say...

..."They found something on your chest x-ray."

On Wednesday, I went to the hospital for my mandated physical to be allowed to stay in the country. The blood test and urine test were fine, even though I hadn't studied for them. But my systolic blood pressure was 170, which is ludicrous. (I'd pop like a tick.) I tried to explain that I was exhausted and nervous and had had several cups of my boss Hee-Duk's coffee, which is literally three or four times stronger than I'd ever make. But the nurses barely spoke any English. That in itself is unfortunate in a medical situation, I'd say.

Yesterday, Thursday, Hee-duk told me the hospital had called and wanted me to return right away. "They found something on your chest x-ray," he told me. So immediately I started thinking about malignant growths and such, and getting kicked out of the country, and, well, dying.

It was an anxious ride back to the hospital. It only makes everything worse when nodoby speaks your language, and I had a bit of a wait, during which nobody would or could explain to me what the problem was. Eventually I got to see a doctor who spoke a little English, and he showed me the x-ray and said that it showed that my heart is unusually large. That may come as a surprise to the waitresses I haven't tipped liberally. (Actually, it's the only thing I don't do liberally.) But you can imagine my gigantic sigh of relief. I'm not being deported, I'm not dying. As Martha Stewart would say, "It's a good thing."