On to the story...
As you may have noticed, I spent this pass semester very busy and stressed. I know other teachers have more classes/more work/whatever...I'm not making a comparison...just for me it was a bit much. Long story short, after midterms I was so worn down that I was having both exhaustion and insomnia, headaches, nausea, and weight gain. After extensive googling, I finally self-diagnosed as having hypothyroidism and decided to take advantage of actually having health insurance and go to the doctor.
Just to digress a moment, I went the better part of a decade without health insurance back in the States. This was before the Affordable Health Care Act/Obamacare, so I pretty much went through every day hoping I didn't get hit by a car (or something slightly less dramatic). So part of the big attraction of moving to Korea was that I would have health insurance under their National Health Insurance Service (NHIS) which all and all is a decent system. I won't talk about the finer points and/or pros and cons of the system....the point here is I was actually able to access and afford health care for the first time in a long time.
Anyway, to me, the difficult parts of going to the doctor here is 1) there are not many general practitioner clinics here...you can still see a GP, but typically you have to go the hospital (which thanks to NHIS is still a fairly streamlined process) and 2) most doctors can speak English, but the nurses and staff do not always...so you need to go with someone, rely on Google Translate, or do like I did and "shop around" for a hospital with an International Clinic. This is super easy if you live in a proper city, but being out in the sticks I had to factor in issues such as travel time (and thus office hours) when choosing a doctor/hospital.
I decided on Seoul National University Hospital...mostly because it was almost directly off a subway exit so it was easy to travel to. They have a very nice International Clinic, that offers not just English translation and English-speaking staff, but also Arabic, Chinese, and Russian (that I noticed...they may offer more languages, I just didn't notice. They also helped me schedule appointments with other departments in the hospital (like MRI, blood testing, and specialists) and even helped me find these places in the hospital. Seoul National University is also one of the top universities in the country so I felt like I was in good hands. And the clinic and hospital are immaculate...even a bit cozy (as much as a hospital can be)...which was nice since I suffer from a good bit of "hospital anxiety." I spent a lot of time in them as a child (though not as a patient, but the family and extended family of my childhood consisted of quite a few elderly members) so I usually approach hospitals with a certain sense of dread.
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| Front of the Main Hospital Building (Seoul National University Hospital) |
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| Map of Seoul National University Hospital |
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| Inside the International Clinic |
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| Inside the International Clinic. They have a computer and various phone chargers for use, and coffee! |
My biggest reason for knowing I choose the right hospital (for me) was: there was small mix-up about my insurance. The way it works here is that you pay a percentage of the hospital fees and then the hospital charges NHIS for the remaining payment up to (roughly) $3,000 dollars in (I think) 6 month period. The clerk accidentally charged me full price (the un-insured price) for my tests because I had been issued the wrong type of hospital identification card (all patients get one). She realized her mistake and had the clinic call me to come back to the payment desk so she could correct it. She also made sure I was issued the correct type of card. This is on top of the fact that she escorted me to the "blood center" and told the receptionist what I needed...which was a big NOT HER JOB. I thought that was extremely kind of her...and then helping making sure I didn't get messed up financially, I know this is the correct hospital for me.
I ended up seeing the endocrinologist at the International Clinic for initial diagnosis, having a blood test, MRI, and fine-needle biopsy for my thyroid (because I ended up have one pretty big nodule..it was not quite 2 cm...which is roughly the size of a dime for all you Americans out there) and then referred to a thyroid specialist for my test results. This ended up being 5 trips to the hospital for me and that was a big bummer because Seoul is almost 2 hours away so one trip takes me all day. Anyway, the punchline is after all that the doctor decided that I don't have thyroid cancer and my symptoms are not due to hypothyroidism. So, yay...I guess. I mean, it's fantastic that I don't have cancer, but that also means I am back to the drawing board for my symptoms.
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| Post-Biopsy...the lovely lime green shirt is provided as a courtesy so you don' get MRI goo all over your clothes. |
So, I will forge on with getting to the bottom of my (health) problems. Truth be told, now that I am mostly desk-warming and not having to churn out lesson and after lesson without a break a lot of my symptoms have eased up. Maybe it is stress related?
In the meantime, if you need a doctor while you are in Korea, I definitely recommend them. Take subway line 4 (the light blue one) to Hyehwa Station and take Exit 3 and walk straight about a block. The gate is on the right. The International Clinic is in the main hospital on top of the hill. I would go around to the main entrance (because you actually approach from the back of the building), take the escalator to the second floor. Make a U-turn to the right and the clinic is immediately in front of you.
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