Since I was a young lass, I have always been a little accident prone. It has considerably diminished since I started wearing glasses, but still, occasionally I have an episode that highlights my lack of coordination and results in an injury. I am getting a little off topic here, well not really actually. I have been to the E.R. a few times, and they are always nice and private and relatively quiet. I went to the Korean E.R. today. There were a lot of doctors in masks running around this big room about the size of a basketball court, with beds everywhere with patients in them, most of which looking feeble and drugged up with I.V.'s in their arms, some coughing, some sleeping, some kind of groaning a little. All the while these masked doctors were shuffling around the room, making their rounds, caring for each patient as best they could.
Why was I in the E.R.? No, not because I had had some clavicle injury or something, not this time. The reason I was there was so that I could be tested for H1N1. On Wednesday my school was closed for the anniversary of its opening, and I was a little relieved, because I was feeling a little bit under the weather. So I get this text message from a friend of mine, who I had spent a lot of the weekend with just a few days earlier. He said that he tested positive for sinjeong influenza, H1N1. I immediately called my co-teacher who has become a little of a parental figure for me, to ask him for advice, and he told me that I should go to the hospital and he gave me directions to get there.
I arrive at the hospital to find kind of a big "take a number" type of room, with many different numbered areas to talk to different kinds of hospital employees, it reminded me of the passport place in L.A.. So I sat down, and waited for my number to be called. The man who called my number didn't really speak English, and I know the word for friend and sinjeong influenza, and pointed at myself and said "sinjeong?" and he understood what I meant. He motioned for his colleague to come and show me to the proper place in the hospital where I could be tested. I followed a hospital employee down the corridors of the hospital, past lots of open doors with patients waiting for hurrying doctors, his English was very good, he told me that the Emergency Room was the place where I could be tested. So that's why I was in the E.R..
After the test was completed, (they swabbed the inside of my throat with a giant q-tip with a wooden handle), they motioned for me to go to the desk at the front of the room, to the man behind the window. So I did, this man wrote this on a little piece of paper:
106 thousand won? This must be some kind of mistake! Enter the feeling in my stomach. The feeling of American hospitals.
I call my co-teacher, looking for some kind of parental explanation, he saus to me "That's expensive! Tell them that you have insurance." And then I give the phone to the hospital worker, and I hear him break down the charges to my co-teacher. 30,000 for the visit, 45,000 for the test itself, 15,000 for the appointment with the doctor...
Sometimes I carry 100 dollars around with me, but not often. I did not have that much money on me at that time, so the hospital man behind the glass told my co-teacher that I could pay when I came back to the hospital to get my test results.
It is funny and interesting to me how the only place to get a test for the sinjeong influenza is the E.R., and a visit to the E.R. costs a lot. It makes me wonder about a lot of things. I love the cheapness of going to a non-hospital doctor in this country. Recently, my friend was having some ankle pain and swelling. He went to a non-hospital doctor, got a consultation, an x-ray, and a cast for 26,000. Yeah, I know, q-tips are WAY more expensive than casts these days.
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