I am not one who many would consider ‘shy’. I’ll even admit that sometimes I like to be the center of attention; however this does not include times when I am down on my luck, or if something bad has happened to me. I usually don’t like to advertise negative things in my life, not (just) because I want people to think my life is perfect, but because I believe in letting go of the negative and focusing on the positive. I couldn’t stand to feel pitied. That being said, it is difficult for anyone to go into the hospital for 10 days without having to tell the story, so here goes.
To start from the beginning, I have a bum kidney. When I was four years old, doctors discovered that I had 3 ureters, which are the tubes that connect your kidneys to your bladder. You’re only supposed to have 2 of them, but I had an extra one that was screwing up my ability to control myself, a fact that was only discovered by my mother one day while giving me a bath. (I always wonder about these situations - as a child, you don’t know that your vision is blurry, or that you are supposed to be able to hear better than you do, or that you’re not supposed to wet yourself every day a little. It seems so sad to me that kids are reliant on others to find these things out and remedy the situations because what if Mom hadn’t noticed? How long would I have gone around not knowing? Poor baby. Luckily I have an awesome and observant Mom.)
So in November of 1986 I had surgery to remove the superfluous ureter, during which they also removed an unknown mass from my left kidney. It never seemed like a big deal to me growing up, but now knowing people with 4-year-old children, I can only imagine how scary it must have been for two people in their twenties (who were practically kids themselves) with their first child undergoing an invasive surgery and being hospitalized for 7 days. So gold medal to my parents for surviving that. Because of this operation, I have always had a scar on my lower stomach that’s about 4 inches long, but it’s covered up by bathing suits so I never really think about it much. Over the years I have had a few kidney infections, always in this left kidney, but never requiring much more than a round of antibiotics and drinking a lot of water. Through these experiences, I learned that the key indication it is a kidney infection is when you wake up with what feels like a cramp in your back and side, up near your ribs. Turns out, it is not a cramp, it’s your kidney becoming so infected it hurts. It is a little strange when an organ you rarely think about (and probably don’t even know where it is located) becomes swollen and painful. This is what happened to me at around 3am on April 1.
As usual, I was surprised at how quickly and severely the pain came on. I had been awake not 4 hours earlier without a clue, and I knew immediately when I woke up that this was a kidney infection and that I would have to take a trip to the hospital for antibiotics. At first I thought I could make it until 9 when Pusan National University Hospital (which is maybe a 1/4 mile walk from my apartment) opened up, but by 6am I realized this pain was excruciating and I would have to go to the Emergency Room. I didn’t know if all hospitals have ER’s, but I figured if not, I would hop a cab and somehow get the point across in my pretty much non-existent Korean. Luckily, I quickly located PNU’s ER and was within an hour given some morphine for the pain, so at least I could then lie down semi-comfortably.
After numerous x-rays and scans and an IV being hooked up and me vomiting into a bag after being injected with the first round of antibiotics, a doctor who spoke very good English came to explain to me that I had a cyst on my left kidney, and the cyst was infected. In fact, it was so severely infected that the doctors were afraid it would burst and that I would become septic, which could possibly put me into a coma or even kill me. They were going to have to perform surgery within the hour to drain the cyst of the infected material, and I would be hospitalized for 5 days while it continued to drain and they pumped me full of antibiotics to kill the infection.
This came as a big surprise to me. I had expected to be prescribed a Z-Pack and to head home to lie in bed for a couple of days drinking gallons of water and watching The Wire on my computer. I was actually surprised when they began doing the x-rays and scans, but I thought maybe it was just an ER thing or a Korea thing. I have become really go-with-the-flow living abroad (I would like to say because I am really adaptable and flexible, but it’s mostly because I just don’t have much choice). I don’t speak the language and I’m a visitor on their turf, so I am pretty much completely at their mercy - especially in times when I am in dire need of medical attention.
So they wheeled me downstairs to the operating room, had me roll onto my stomach and place my arms above my head, and put some kind of general anesthetic or pain killer (I can’t be sure because of the language barrier) into my IV. They did not put me under, so I’m not sure exactly what was going on there. I could see different images on the computer screens around the bed, and I asked the nurse where was the kidney they were about to operate on. I could see what I thought were the kidneys and one of them had a mass on it about half the size of the kidney itself, but I wanted to be sure, and the doctor wasn’t in the room yet, so we had time to kill. Plus I was feeling woozy because of the drugs and nervous for obvious reasons, so I wanted something to distract me from just waiting. The nurse pointed to where I had been looking, and I was correct about that being the cyst, which was a pretty impressive size.
Soon, the ‘Professor’, as the nurse called him, came in and began by giving me local anesthetic in the kidney area. There was some pain, but it was mostly just uncomfortable. It was over very quickly though - I probably only spent half an hour in the operating room altogether. When he was finished, the doctor held up a fat syringe halfway full of a reddish-pink, opaque substance he had drained from the cyst. It looked like a lot to me, and it was pretty gross.
After that, I was wheeled back down to the ER and for a while I thought there was no way I would be able to lay on my back for days. I was in pain, and of course the area was tender and I was scared to move a muscle in my back, but my arms were already going numb from being held up that long. By this point, my co-teacher Jiwon had arrived, and Sarah and Marcus showed up not long after. They helped me roll over onto my side, but I was still scared to move much more than that. I was soon moved to the ICU, the only place they had empty beds available. Not surprisingly, this is where things are blurry, but I know that Sarah brought my computer and some things for me from home, and Mrs. Kim brought me some mandu (dumplings), which I once mentioned I liked and now she says remind her of me every time she sees them. I do like them. I don’t know if that means I should be forever associated with them in someone’s mind, but whatever. I was happy to find out that there was internet in the ICU, albeit spotty internet, so I could have access to the outside world. I don’t remember much else, but I slept for quite some time that night, in an awkward position on my right side with my right hand (the IV hand) sort of held over my heart. I had realized too late that for the second time (the first time being one time in college when I was very dehydrated but did not stay overnight in the hospital) the bad kidney was on my left side and my IV was in my right hand, so I was doomed to be stuck in an uncomfortable position any time I tried to be horizontal. Next time I’m sure I’ll remember this... but I’m planning on there not being a next time.
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