Yesterday we went down to Busan to go to the hospital. Over the Chuseok weekend, MyeongHee’s mother complained of being overly week. So, after everyone went home, she got checked out and was diagnosed with pneumonia. I’ve had it – twice – and it ain’t fun. It leaves you feeling weak and exhausted with just minor efforts.

In Korea, a visit to the hospital is not just a short visit. Its hours. In the small room she shared with four other older women, I watched sons give massages, daughters change bandages and daughters-in-law change bedpans. Nurses came and went and checked on IV tubes and gave meds here and there, but families did just about everything else. Just as during the holiday, MyeongHee’s older brother wife did most of the work. Apparently, the oldest son’s wife spends her life taking care of his family including holidays, preparing ancestor memorials, and caring for his sick parents.

This was my first visit to a Korean hospital and I must say it was quite shocking. Whether they’re all like this, I have no idea. But the crowded 5-bed room (same size as any two-bed room I’ve seen in America) was just one aspect. We went down to get her a CT and patients lined halls, some ambulatory dragging IV bottles along, some in wheel chairs and some in wheeled beds. And with nearly all of them, was their families. Children ran around and played amoung the patients and visitors. Nurses dodged all manner of things on their various errands. It was a mad jumble of people, beds, carts and wheeled thises and thats. This looked like a scene from a disaster movie, minus the blood and gore.

I can’t say anyone wasn’t being well taken care of or neglected. But it was a very different world from the orderly places most western hospitals seemed to me.

I hope I never have to use one of these places personally.