[Part 1] 211. Trip to the doctor's

Last night, the right side of my chest started hurting, like there was something pressing against me and I had slight difficulty in breathing. I got pretty worried because this was the first time that I felt like this. It’s been about 3 weeks and I’m still sick. And according to Jenna, I made a lot of noises when I slept last night, apart from coughing incessantly. Apparently, I sounded like I was in pain. So this morning, I decided to skip class to go to the doctor’s since the clinic’s operating time is till 5pm and I have my afternoon class till 4pm today.

Under our Hanwha insurance policy, there are 2 hospitals in Busan that we can visit, of which 1 is just in Sasang. So I went to the one in Sasang (West Busan Centum Hospital), near Exit #1 of Sasang Station.
The hospital is not exactly foreigner-friendly though. Sure, the signs are written in English too but other than that, I didn’t know where to go first. If you have a cold and you are visiting the hospital, go up to the 2nd floor to the Register desk and give your insurance card, Alien Registration Card and student card to the staff before proceeding to the nurse station and giving one of the nurses a slip of paper that you’d receive from the Register desk. Wait till the nurse calls your name and have your blood pressure and body temperature measured. After awhile, I was called into the consultation room. I wrote down a list of my symptoms on a Post-it in English yesterday night and just simply handed it to the doctor lol.  I didn’t know the Korean terms for them and all doctors here can read English, I think. My KU buddy’s now in medical school and his textbooks are mostly written in English. The doctor asked me what I wanted to do. Well, I thought he should know what I should do or need but he asked me whether I wanted to have an x-ray taken or just get an injection and medication. To be on the safe side, I asked for an x-ray so I had to go down to the x-ray room on the 1st floor.
I had 2 x-rays taken: one from the front and the other from the side. Well, I didn’t know that I had to hold my hands up in the air to take the latter and when the guy instructed me, I couldn’t understand him. I only heard “손 something something” so I asked him if he could speak in English instead and he said, “Put your hands up.”. And the way he said it was so funny that we both burst out laughing. 2PM’s Put Your Hands up…
Went back to the consultation room and the doctor said everything’s fine for me and that I just have to get the injection and eat the medication that he’d prescribe me. The injection 주사실 is on the 1st floor and you’ll get a butt injection. I was really surprised though because I’ve never had an injection for a cold before AND on the butt. The last time I had a butt injection was when I was a baby.
After getting the injection done, I went to the pharmacy that’s outside the main building, and beside the entrance to the carpark, to collect my medication. All in all, I paid 15,000원 for my consultation and 7,760원 for the medication. The medication was repacked into packets for morning, afternoon and night. It’s quite cool that the medicine was repacked for easy consumption but I have no idea which medicine is for what and which causes drowsiness :(

I made it back to school in time for the last period of our morning session before going for lunch with my classmates and having 2 hours of 시사 class.

Dinner