More Catching Up!

On Sunday, Brigid and I met to go see Rent the Musical.  Anthony Rapp and Adam Pascal, who were the original Mark and Rodger on Broadway and in the movie, played their characters and it was...amazing.  Seriously fantastic.  I am kind of glad I went on the last day or I would have had the urge to go see it again.  I was really excited for Adam Pascal since he was the originial Broadway lead in two of my top 5 musicals (Rent and Aida) and he did not disappoint.  But even better was Anthony Rapp who totally OWNED that musical.  I was all a twitter from seeing them for DAYS afterwards.  It was totally worth the money.

After the musical we headed over to Insadong to do some shopping and eat some delicious dumplings for dinner.  We walked around Insadong for a while where I picked up a birthday gift for my mom and a handmade tea set for myself.  It was just too beautiful.  Plus I bargained her down more than $30 from her original offer, so I really can't complain!

My tea set.

Monday I came home from school feeling especially crappy.  I couldn't breathe all day and by the evening I had a splitting headache.  I went to bed really early and when I woke up on Tuesday morning feeling the same, I called Sienna and told her I felt too bad to come into work.  After hearing my voice she said it was fine and told me I needed to stay home and go to the hospital.

I did a little research online about hospitals and ended up finding a state department suggested hospital in the next district over.  I called and booked an appointment at Asan Hospital's international clinic for 3:00pm.  Then I went back to sleep for about 5 more hours.  I caught a taxi over to the hospital and it turned out to be only about 10 minutes (and around $4) away.  The wonderful and sweet nurses got me all checked in and I saw the doctors, both of whom spoke excellent English.  The main doctor decided that I needed to have a head x-ray done to take a look at my sinuses and she orded some blood work because during my initial medical check the bloodwork had shown a higher than normal white blood count.  When I got sent out to the other departments they sent me with an English speaking buddy, so that was awesome.  They whisked me off to have my blood drawn and my head x-rayed and while I was gone they called in my prescription for Sudafed so it was delivered to their office.  They were fast, efficient, extremely nice, and obviously knew what they were doing.  My buddy also escorted me to pay my bill and get my Asan medical card with my personalized ID on it.  I could not have asked for a more pleasant experience.  If you ever get sick in Seoul, consider going to Asan Medical Center.

Today I took another sick day because I felt bad again and I had to go back to the clinic to have my x-ray read so we could figure out what was wrong.  Dr. Choi pulled up my x-ray on her computer and let me look at it.  She pointed out where my sinuses were and then showed me another x-ray as an example of what my sinuses SHOULD look like.  While your sinuses should show up on the x-ray as basically black areas, my right sinus was almost completely white because there was so much fluid in it.  Diagnosis: acute sinus infection.  Result: I came home with a big bag of meds.  I scored a month of Augmentin, a month of prescription strength Sudafed, and a stash of Nasonex to use so that I can prevent the NEXT sinus infection.

I felt like a drug dealer carrying all of this home!

I taxied back, popped into the store real quick and hung out around the apartment for a bit before going out to dinner with South Africa Laura and Angie at this cheap and delicious little place down the street.  Tonight I am going to hit the sack early in preparation for a long day back at work (and after school) tomorrow.

Thanks to everyone who wished for my speedy recovery.  Hopefully I will kill this thing and be back to breathing in no time!