Oh Doctor!

Had a huge scare the week before my birthday trip in that I was really sick.( the cough is crazy!) Korea has wrecked havoc on my health at times, but at least the medical services are efficient and cheap.

The trip to the office itself takes literally fifteen minutes if it is not crowded... 25 minutes if it is. You basically check in ( and we have special foreigner "passport" type insurance cards so they even know to call us "Allison" and "Joseph". Then they take you directly back to the doctor within 10 or 15 minutes ( the longest I have ever waited was 10 minutes and the place was packed) The doctor speaks passable English and asks if I want my medication in Injection form (during which he smiled and make the injection motion towards his bum laughing as I can not shake my head no fast enough!) or pill form. Pills it is!!!!! Then he writes a perscription and it is back off to the check out... which is the same place as the check in.... then you cough up (literally in some cases) about 3,000 won ($2.50 people!) and you are on your way to the Pharmacy.

There you hand them the paper you received at check out and they take four or five minutes to fill your perscription, and then you will speak with the pharmacist about your medication and side effects which basically consists of him saying:

" This is anti nose, this is cough, this is sleep, these are achy, Drink water and no alcohol. Milk, only sometimes." - (I just skipped milk all together because I had no idea what he meant?!?!?!)

But then he sends you home with pre-measured and allotted medication which you take three times a day. It is already seperated with nice numbers on it so you can figure it out. Bless them because the last thing I wanted to do sick was get out the dictionary and see what each baggie said.

Too bad they give you enough pills to feed a small country for a month... and half a pill is in there too, that might be a psuedo claritin... not sure... but you have to drink about a gallon of water to get them all down.

But the best medicine of all was Joseph walking in the door with a pizza from our favorite place Pizza Maru, so I didn't have to cook that night!

Yeah!!!!!
OH!!! maybe that was what he meant by "milk sometimes...", I can have it sometimes, just cheese form?!?!?! still trying to figure that one out.

Thankfully I am feeling better these days.