Hospital visit

On Friday Jonathan and I visited a nearby hospital for our physicals which were required by the SDA Institute in order to get our Foreigner ID cards. One of the secretaries from our institute, Jasmine, took us and it was a blessing to have her along. We wouldn't have been able to do anything without her there to find out where to go and fill in the paperwork for us. We left the office at about 1:15 p.m. and she told us the visit shouldn't take much longer than 40 minutes. We took a taxi to the Chungmu Hospital (which we discovered, after we got back from the errand, that we could see from the street corner outside our institute building). Jasmine got the forms for us at the front desk and then found out where to go for the first part of our physicals. We went up to the fourth floor and found a crowded waiting room as we stepped out of the elevator. Jasmine helped us to fill out our forms as we waited to be called to the desk. When it was finally our turn we got instructions for where to go next. We went back down to the main floor and then waited some more before following Jasmine into a small room off the hallway that I instinctively knew was a blood test room. I've seen my fair share of those! Starting when I was about four years old, I had to get a lot of blood tests because some doctors thought I might be anemic or have diabetes, and because of that I kind of have a phobia of blood tests. Injections are totally fine. I have no problem with those, but blood tests are a whole different story. When we walked into the blood test room I started freaking out a little, especially since we were told not to eat four hours before our appointment. I usually feel pretty ill after getting a blood test if I haven't eaten enough beforehand. Anyway, the phlebotomist gave a bunch of instructions to Jasmine and then handed her two cups, each holding an indicator strips and a plastic vial with a lid. I breathed a sigh of relief as we walked back into the hallway. Jasmine seemed a bit unsure about what to tell us to do with our cups and accompanying paraphernalia, but we were both pretty sure what we'd have to do. Jasmine called someone at the head office in Seoul and then gave me the phone so the lady could tell me what to do. Her instructions were exactly what we had expected so we went off to comply. Once I showed the phlebotomist the indicator strip and handed over the full vial, she told me to sit using Korean and sign language. I didn't even have time to get all worked up again before she had poked my left inside-of-the-elbow vein and collected a vial of my dark red blood. Relieved the blood test was over with, I went back to the hallway to wait for Jonathan's turn to be finished. He came back out with a cotton swab wedged in the middle of both bent arms. The woman, it turned out, had dug around with a needle in one of his arms before deciding she couldn't get a good vein and tried the other arm. I felt extremely sorry for Jonathan, but very thankful my own veins had cooperated for her! Next was chest x-rays, which only took a few minutes. Then we headed over a catwalk to the newer section of the hospital for the quickest dental check we'd ever experienced. A hygienist showed us to a glassed-in room where she pointed to a dental chair. One at a time we sat in the chair and she inspected our mouths. That finished, we went back to the first building and to the fourth floor again, where we'd started our adventure. We got weighed and measured, had a sight test, hearing test, colour-blindness test, got our blood pressure taken and were back out the door within a few minutes. Finally we were finished. All in all, the whole process had taken more than an hour and a half, much longer than Jasmine had guessed. We were certainly glad the visit was completed.

Later that afternoon Fabrice, Jonathan and I went out for pizza at a place called Mr. Pizza. The pizzas were great and definitely made up for the icky blood tests. And the take-out boxes we got when we left were so bright and cheerful they made me smile. I'm definitely impressed with the food presentation here!