Female Trouble (or, pay no attention to the man behind the curtain)

This isn't about Oz, it's about the gynecologist's office. And it must say something about how long I've been in Korea that for the moment I've stopped writing about 'travel' and started writing about trips to the doctor's office. And not just any doctor's office either, mind you -the 'woman's' doctor. Consider yourself forewarned.

First of all, perhaps I shouldn't assume anything. A gynecologist is a doctor who specializes in a woman's reproductive health. (S)he's the'breasts and bits' guy. A trip to the gynecologist ranks somewhere below having molars extracted without any Novocaine for most* women(acknowledging that I haven't used this actual comparison in talking with my female friends...), not because of any pain factor but just in terms of sheer enjoyability. I mean seriously, does any man relish the thought of that prostate exam you have to get? I wrote this message first without this paragraph, but then in trying to come up with a good comparison for my male readers I realized that not only do I not know what a doctor who specializes in male reproductive health is called, but even if there is one. It seems reasonable to think there would be, but I can't for the life of me recall ever hearing about one. If you are highly sensitive to 'too much information' type messages, this is your last warning.

I am sitting quietly in the 2nd floor waiting room of one of Changwon's larger and newer private hospitals. Although judging from the variety of patients cruising the grounds in wheelchairs or tied to IV-poles the hospital treats everything, it has a special reputation for obstetrics and gynecology. The percentage of women in the last stages ofpregnancy or toting freshly spawned offspring rivals that of Seoul's air conditioned Coex Mall when the baby fair was in town in the middle of last August's heat wave. The only thing stopping me from bolting in terror is the soothing presence of a cute albino hedgehog beside the nurse's desk. None of the children tearing around the place seem to notice him, but I am greatly comforted.

I didn't come to this particular hospital because of its reputation. I came because I'd met one of the doctors at the top of the mountain behind my house when I fist came to town and was pretty sure his English was good. Call me crazy for not being eager to bring along any of myKorean friends to translate (or not, depending on their comfort level). A trip to the physiotherapist or ENT I can handle in Korean - 'I have a cold' or 'other side please' are not too tough for any novice language learner. The vocabulary involved in this endeavor however seemed likely to be a bit less mundane.

One of the nurses comes over to me, walking very softly in her white, orthopedic, nurse-or-nun sandals. She looks very uncomfortable. I'm absolutely sure this is because I am a foreigner and not because she's actually uncomfortable with the subject matter. She leans in close and whispers something in rapid-fire Korean. I stare at her dumbly. She asks me, in Korean, if I speak any Korean. Under the circumstances I think it's best to say no. She purses her lips for a moment, looks at the hedgehog (probably comparing our intellects), then smiles and comes back with something that may have been English. She says it so quickly that I can't tell. She repeats it a little louder, still no response from the mute in the chair. Then, very loudly and very clearly, she barks 'COITUS HISTORY!' She's asking about sex. Every eye in the waiting room turns to us. She turns on her heel and goes back to the nurse's desk. This is probably not going to go as smoothly as I had hoped.

Luckily, the doctor does speak English. After asking me for the 6th time if I am absolutely sure I am not pregnant we move on to the physical examination. While he sits at his desk in the adjoining room,the nurse hands me a black, floral-print skirt with a narrow lace ruffle around the bottom and an elastic waistband. Like I really want to look feminine under the circumstances. As I pull it on, I swear to myself that I will never complain about an ugly green hospital gown again. The vinyl-covered chair looms large in the middle of the room, looking suspiciously like one of the weight machines from my gym stripped of its weight stack. In position, I am almost sitting up, the entire length of my legs cradled by the massive, padded rests that curve away from each other at a most uncomfortable angle. The nurse hitches the skirt up high around my waist - I don't know why she bothered making me put it on in the first place.

And then she pulls the curtain across my upper body, slicing me neatly in two.

A curtain??? What does she think she's doing? All of the equipment and machines, not to mention the exposed half of my body, is now out of my view. How will I be able to understand what's going on if I can't see any of it? I'm not a claustrophobic person, but the thought of not being able to see the proceedings is truly frightening. I open the curtain. She mutters something about not worrying and pulls it firmly closed. I open it. She glares at me. The doctor comes in. 'Oh my god I'm sorry!' he yelps as he makes to hightail it back to the other room. The nurse stops him, telling him that I won't let her close the curtain in a tone of voice usually reserved for snitching on siblings. The doctor looks a little bemused as he asks me if I'd prefer to leave the curtain open, and we get underway.

The examination itself goes as smoothly and comfortably as one could hope under the circumstances. He explains everything he's going to do BEFORE he does any of it, in the best tradition of enlightened gynecology. He is gentle, fast and very professional. He goes back to his desk, I get re-dressed and go out to meet him.

'What do you mean you don't want to take any medicine??' he asks, completely incredulous after explaining his diagnosis to me. I have had my period for 3 solid weeks and he's just finished telling me that it's either caused by stress or something unknown-but-innocuous, that it happens very, very commonly to women my age who have not had any children. We have already ascertained that there is little or no danger to me from the mandarin-sized cyst that is attached to my left ovary, and that it will almost certainly disappear on its own very, very soon. As for the period, it's annoying and fatiguing, but also not dangerous. 'I don't want to take oral contraceptives if I don't have to' I tell him, and he drops his pen that I know what his carefully unnamed 'hormone-type pills' are. When he realizes that I have at least half a clue, he cuts the crap. 'I have no idea how long the bleeding will continue,' he says, 'no one has ever refused them before.'

I leave the office without a prescription, but with a promise to return a week later if the bleeding continues. It doesn't. Relaying the story in my Korean friend's kitchen (a middle aged mother with a couple of teenaged sons - not present), she almost falls off her chair when I tell her about the curtain. She sticks her knees up in the air in a fair impression of a dead cockroach and asks, 'you mean face-to-face, here?????' I ask her how else I am supposed to talk to him during the examination and she looks utterly gobsmacked. 'Why on earth would you want to TALK to him???????'. There is a lot about this country that I have left to learn.

Living the Dream

According to the New York Times, I have 'relatively moderate wisdom'. I scored a 3.9 on a 6 point scale designed by some sociologist in the states who is studying the addage 'the older the wiser'. It had nothing to say about what exactly my score signified (other than that I am fair-middlin' in the wise department - too bad wise-cracks don't count towards the total score!), but I figure I'm doing okay. The more I see and experience the less I am sure about and the more playful I feel, so that's something. I wonder what kind of score the Dalai Lama would get,or the Pope, or Madonna.

I recently tried out a different kind of contact lens - dream lenses. I want to call them new, since I'd never heard of them before and theys eem like a miracle advancement, but in fact they've been around for the last 40 years. They were originally designed to slow the progress of myopia in children (something they are apparently very successful at doing), but as they were using them they discovered this handy side-effect - for a day or two after wearing, you can see better. MUCH better. Essentially, you wear little glass retainers for your corneas. They do a laser map of your eye's topography, then custom grind a special kind of hard contact lens to reshape your eye - as you sleep. You put them in when you go to bed, wear them all night, then take them out when you get up in the morning. In the daytime, you don't wear anything. It's like you've just had surgery as you slept, and now have perfect vision - except the changes aren't permanent and as soon as you stop wearing them for a few days your eyes return to the exact way they were before. Surgery without the risks.

The first night I wore them, I felt like I had sand in my eyes. When I woke up, my vision was nearly as bad as before except now my glasses gave me a headache. On the second morning, that sand-in-the-eye feeling had gone away, but my eyesight was still not very good. The eye doctor assured me it would just take a little more time. It wasn't until my second visit to the doctor a week later, when I could read right down to the tiniest line on the eye chart without any kind of lenses (usually Ican't read that line with my nose pressed against the paper), that I realized what a huge improvement they were making. The only problem...I still couldn't see anything at night. Just great big blobs of light with enormous halos around them. Apparently this is because the lens is only 6mm across, which is smaller than the size of my pupil in low-light conditions. When it gets dark, I'm looking out of the part of my cornea that hasn't been reshaped. He suggested I wait another couple of weeks. Two weeks later, night time is still a technicolor riot of light with no definition and my dream lens dream has come to an end. It was magnificent for those few weeks (in the day time at least!) to know what it's like to see my way with no lenses whatseoever between me and the view.

Incredible. Incidentally, I am a freak of nature. I sure am glad I didn't opt forthe surgery!! Halos are not normal with dream lenses, so if they sound good to you, you should definitely give them a try. As for me, I'll probably indulge myself on those cute new frames they have in the glasses shop down the road instead. Ease my sorrows (tee hee)...

This afternoon I paid a visit to the 'soap lady' - a young woman in town who has her own home-soap-making supply shop. She also teaches lessons. Over the last year I have taken A LOT of lessons from her, and in the process become her friend (despite the fact that she doesn't speak hardly any English and my Korean is often not a lot better). We were hanging out, perusing the new stock and enjoying the air con (it was 30Ctoday). I was very excited about one of her new products, a cheap container for dispensing one of my home brewed concoctions, and went tobuy it...but she wouldn't sell. She said it wasn't very good. This is a pretty common occurrence around here - the side-dish woman will tell me 'oh, that's not delicious today', the fruit lady will say 'those will be cheaper next week', the guy at the corner store will direct me to the bottled water that 'tastes the same, but half the price', meanwhile all of them are tossing a few extras in the bag of whatever it is I happen to be buying. Some how I have a hard time immagining the clerks at Safeway doing that, or anywhere else back home.

Home. A tricky concept. Here I am, writing in what is very much my home (and what a great home it is!!), talking about 'back home' thousands of kilometers away and meaning it for both of them. It gets confusing in a hurry. 'Back in Canada' seems too cold, but calling it 'home' seems to belittle the homeiness of where I am now. I'm not goingto reflect on this for long, don't worry. Soot and Gom are doing their calisthenics on the floor around me, littering hay all over the place. Bet they don't have any existential questions about the nature of home. But while I'm on the subject, I am planning to be back home this summer for a while. I don't have my plane tickets yet, so don't get too excited (those of you who are going to be close enough to get excited), but I'm working on it. Probably July. I'm looking forward to the trip. As many of you as are going to be around, I can't wait to catch up!

Time to walk over to the local pizza lady. Even though she can't believe I would come back again and again for what must be (in her opinion) the least appetizing pizza of all time (cheese free), she happily makes it for me without making me listen to the 'but it won't be delicious' speech first. Which is what I usually have to listen to when I order something without cheese, or sauce, or sugar, or whatever other key ingredient makes it what it is (to everyone else). It really is a relief to skip it. Plus the pizza's not half bad either. I hope this finds you well and happy and enjoying your own cheese-free pizza at home, whatever and wherever that may be!