I don’t know whether it was a virus or food poisoning, but for the last several days I’ve felt like hammered meat loaf. It started out with a headache and mild indigestion on Thursday afternoon. I struggled through work that day and again on Friday (which is game day, so I didn’t have to concentrate too hard.) But, by Saturday morning I felt bad enough to go to the hospital. My head hurt, my guts ached, my legs, arms, shoulders and neck moaned with every movement, I had started having bad diarrhoea and I had a fever.

The last time I felt this bad was when I had pneumonia and even walking to the bathroom was a chore. At the hospital they took xrays, sonogramed my guts, took blood and urine tests, poked and prodded me. And that was just the diagnostics. They they administered multiple shots – my butt, arm and an IV. MyeongHee and I were there for about 3 hours through all the tests and whatnot. It would have been tough without her as I wasn’t up to the mental tasks of translating from Korean. That was amazing since English is a requirement for college students including Doctors and Nurses – only the Doctor spoke a few words of it. The pharmacist afterwards spoke better English in describing how/when I should ingest the drugs she’d given me.

The good news: The entire visit to the hospital, including all the tests, xrays, radiologists, internal medicine guys, IV, etc was only around $160. Another $13 for the drugs. MyeongHee was astounded when I estimated the American health care equivalent cost at an order of magnitude higher. I’ve already submitted the receipts to the insurance agency (AIG), and unless they’ve already spent all their money on another lavish retreat for their execs I should get most of that reimbursed. I still have a hard time comprehending why this level of health care at this price cannot be made available in America.

I still don’t feel 100%, but better than late last week anyway.