Caveat: Los Güeyes Gangnam Stylin

I took my brother to Gangnam today. Somos los hermanos Güeyes (Ways, because of our family name, get it?), y fuimos gangnam stylin.

We ate tacos at a pretty good taco joint, called Dos Tacos, that I like to visit. I ordered fish tacos. Milestone: I ate spicy food for lunch. First time in 4 months.

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Amazingly, when I sat down, a poster from my hometown (more-or-less) was facing me.

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We went to the bookstore which caused me to spend money. Then we walked between raindrops in an afternoon rainstorm.

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We had some coffee at a very crowded cafe, and I showed Andrew the Korean Language hagwon where I studied Korean full-time back in 2010. Then he said, “I’d be open to going to a museum.”

Using my smartphone, I found the closest museum to where we were, and we went there. It was the “South Branch” (“남” = nam) of the Seoul Museum of Art. It was kind of small but the price was right (“free”) and it was not that amazing, but it had some interesting decorative art / interior design stuff. Pictures weren’t allowed inside.

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Here is a chair sculpture I saw outside, though.

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And I was looking through the columns of the lovely old pre-Japanese building (it was once the Belgian Embassy to Joseon Korea around 1900) at the sun.

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At home for dinner I had kimchi with some rice among other things. I’m almost back to my pre-horrible-symptoms (i.e. at least 4 months ago) eating capacity and range. This is pleasing.

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Caveat: Dichotomia; i.e. 이분법(二分法)에 대한 경계(警戒)

I don’t know why I feel the urge to try to understand such difficult things in Korean when I can still barely communicate my needs in a restaurant. I guess it’s just more interesting to me.

I was somewhat randomly poking around in my Korean-English Dictionary of Buddhist Terms and ran across this phrase:

이분법(二分法)에 대한 경계(警戒)
dichotomy-LOC face-PASTPART caution
I would translate this, roughly, as:

Beware of Dichotomies

Which is awesome, as it could be caveat dichotomia in Latin.

The context was an entry on 시비구불선 (是非俱不禪) on p. 645 of my dictionary – the mistake of meditating on right and wrong, more or less.

Here’s what the rest of the Korean says:
시비는 참선과 거리가 멀며,
right/wrong-TOPIC meditation-WITH distance be-far-WHILE
시비가 있는 곳엔
right/wrong-SUBJ have-PRESPART place-AT-TOPIC

진리가 있을 수 없다.
truth-SUBJ have-POSSIBLE-NOT
The English on the same entry isn’t really a translation – it’s its own thing:

Meditation has nothing to do with arguments: Where there is an argument about right or wrong, this and that, there is no wisdom or truth.

The gist is the same, but the detailed meaning seems widely variant.


Here is a random picture: the luminous November sky in Hongnong, 2010.

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Caveat: Around Camp Edwards, To Palm Springs

About once a year, I make a trip out to Camp Edwards. It’s not far. I figured with Andrew here, it was as good a time as any to go look at it.

I was stationed at Camp Edwards, 296th Forward Support Battalion, Bravo Company, 2nd Infantry Division, in 1991. Camp Edwards no longer exists – the US Army closed it in the late 90’s. A few years back, when I went there, the buildings were still there but abandoned, but the last few times I’ve gone, it’s just a vacant lot with a fence around it.

From a block from my house, we got on the #600 bus and that dropped us right at the “front gate” of Camp Edwards, after a wending half-hour bus ride through Gyoha and Geumchon (neither of which really existed in 1991). This is the front gate, below. The bridge structure is the railroad track, now elevated. In 1991 it was at grade level.

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We walked along the fence and I pointed out where the various features of Camp Edwards were located: the dining hall, the barracks, HQ, the warehouse, and the motor pool. Here is a picture of where the motor pool building was – I remember that spindly tall white-barked tree (birch?) that’s kind of in the right of center of the photo, as being in the motor pool’s “front yard.”

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I spontaneously decided that I was feeling healthy enough to try to walk around Camp Edwards. I haven’t ever tried this. I’m sure we circumnavigated the camp at various times on PT exercises and activities back when I was stationed there, including things like our periodic off-post runs. But certainly I’d never tried it since.

So we set off northward down a country lane.

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The country lane led to a farm.

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And it led through some woods.

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And we came to another farm.

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And we saw a Korean farmer in his field.

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Then we got a little bit lost in the woods. Although we ran out of road, we didn’t run out of abandoned chairs.

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After tromping through the brush a bit, I decided I wasn’t up to cross-country hiking, so we went back along the road, and around a small hill and came to a gravesite (which abound in rural Korea).

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We came to an area that I recognized, through 22 years of mental haze, as being the “back” of Camp Edwards. There was a small concrete wall with old machine-gun emplacements, and this gateway, where Andrew posed with his umbrella (it was raining at this point, though not hard).

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We walked along the road, back south, now, having gotten at least halfway around Camp Edwards moving counterclockwise.

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We came to giant “tank trap” of impressive engineering and dimensions.

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I saluted Andrew from inside the tank trap.

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Then we walked up the road and came to a new development called PalmSprings (팜스프링). 

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We passed a Korean mini-mall with the parking in front, American-style. This is sufficiently rare in my experience, in Korea, to be notable, so I took a picture. I believe this is all on land that was formerly part of Camp Edwards.

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Then we walked to Geumchon station and took the train back to Ilsan. In Ilsan, I wanted to wait for a package that was being delivered at KarmaPlus – even though KarmaPlus was closed due to the summer break.

So we stopped and had a very, very decadant lunch at “Burger Sharp,” a restaurant right next door the KarmaPlus building, that’s very popular with the students.

I swear, in 5 years of living in Ilsan and working in this Hugok neighborhood, I have only eaten at this place once or twice. But I figured, what the hey? I’m living somewhat free-and-loose with respect to my normal strictures, lately.

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Then, due to a communication error, we waited for more than an hour for a package that was already there waiting for me. Ah well. I need to improve my Korean so I understand when they tell me these things.

Then we came home.

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Caveat: Entertaining Brother Andrew

My dear brother Andrew has been so, so good to me. He’s being an excellent nursemaid, provides almost entirely positive moral support, holds my hand when the doctors are mean to me, and makes sure my fridge is full (and then keeps emptying it too).

So keeping Andrew entertained is foremost among my own tasks. Today I feel accomplished in that realm.

Andrew likes to be outside, but not in the city. He’s a forest and country type person.

So, in the morning, I dragged him onto the subway to Yeonsinnae, and then we hiked uphill until we came to Bulgwang Temple and then the entrance to Bukhansan National Park, which sits right in the heart of the northern half of Seoul, a bit the way the Santa Monica Mountains embed themselves in the heart of L.A.

He was clearly pleased when we hiked up into the woods, among the rocks. I left him there, went back downhill, and came home. He came home several hours later.

Some pictures.

The temple.

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Andrew admiring craftsmanship.

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Me sitting on the temple stoop.

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A view of some rocks, from the trail. Andrew likes rocks.

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The view looking back toward Yeonsinnae.

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Andrew on the trail.

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Passing the temple again on the way back down. There was a monk inside, chanting, so I stopped for a while.

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The temple bell tower – but it’s missing its bell.

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Then, this afternoon, I showed him the strangest movie yet, from among my bizarre and eclectic collection. I’ve been showing him a lot of my favorites, but he seemed to rather enjoy this one, especially. I reviewed the movie, Love Exposure, here.

Here are two temple panel paintings, which I’ll post for archival purposes. The first is a bit unusual – it feels like a “placeholder” as opposed to a true painting.

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Caveat: борщ

I want to prevent my brother from growing too bored while he visits. Plus, I have been craving Russian food from my favorite Russian-food restaurant for a long time – well before the diagnosis.

So we took the subway into Seoul and walked to the neighborhood I call Russiatown, near Dongdaemun. Andrew is even more of a Russophile than I am, so I thought he would enjoy this.

This is the restaurant.

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It’s changed names several times over the years, but they always have the same borshcht recipe, which is delicious.

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I also ordered a fried liver stroganoff that was quite good – I can’t believe that I, the incipient vegetarian, was craving liver, but I was. And so I ate it. The other purple stuff is svekolny – a beet and garlic slaw.

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I got extra sour cream on the side. Sour cream is hard to find in Korea. I really enjoyed that food.

Afterward, we walked up to the 청계천 [cheong-gye-cheon]. Andrew wanted a “proof of tourism” picture.

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Then we came home and relaxed. Currently he’s off riding his bike somewhere – did I mention he bought a bike? I didn’t see this as a bad idea – when he goes back to the States, I will inherit the bike – perhaps I will even ride it.

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Caveat: 고봉산 영천사

Today, Andrew and I set out for a temple I visited a long time ago. I believe it is the “working mountain temple” closest to my home. It’s on the side of a mountain called Gobong-san (고봉산), which is north of the railroad tracks in the part of Ilsan I think of as “old Ilsan”. It is my opinion that this is the “one mountain,” of the various mountains around, that is the best candidate for the origin of the name of the city of Ilsan, which means “one mountain.”
We visited the temple on this mountain called 영천사 [yeong-cheon-sa]. It’s a small, unpretentious working temple. I met a monk there and had an actual conversation with him – I lived in Ilsan, I had been in the cancer center, my brother was visiting. He wished me good health. Then he ran down and told one of the men hanging out near a storage shed, “OMG there’s a foreigner speaking Korean up there!” I didn’t catch the exact words in Korean, but that was the drift of it.

I felt flattered.

I bowed.

Here are some pictures.

Andrew on the trail up the mountain.

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The temple garden.

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Behind the temple outbuilding (monks’ quarters).

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Standing on the stoop of the temple looking toward Tanhyeon towers.

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The main temple building and administrative building to the right.

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A smaller shrine behind the main temple. These are always my favorite places to go to do sitting or prostrations, rather than the main temples. They are dedicated to various saints (bodhisattvas) and I have no idea which one this one was dedicated to – I don’t really see that it matters.

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The interior of that small shrine.

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Andrew took a picture of me doing a few prostrations there.

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I took a picture of Andrew sitting quietly there.

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Looking down on the larger temple from the stoop at the shrine.

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A trail leading up into the forest behind the shrine.

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A buddha in a stone niche near the shrine.

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A very large number of kimchi pots behind the administration building.

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A closed door detail on the shrine.

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I like how in random spots you can find little figurines enacting scenes.

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Some other figurines.

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Here is a picture of a woman getting a drink of water at the public fountain (every temple has one) and a laughing buddha. Slightly out of focus…

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Here is another smaller temple we passed while walking down the mountain.

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A jang-seung [장승 = traditional shamanistic totem] I saw amid some flowers on the main road at the base of the mountain at the end of the trip.

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Here are a ton of “temple-panel paintings” that I snapped. I love these things and am trying to build up a collection of images of them.

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Caveat: Drug Scarf

My drugs come prepackaged in little “breakfast/lunch/dinner” packets that come attached in a long chain of little cellophane packages. I was talking to Andrew about the fact that my ugly, deformed neck requires me to adopt some new fashion – turtlenecks or gauche scarves.

He suggested I could use my string-o-drug-packets as a scarf: drug scarf!

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Caveat: return from the riceless wilderness

This evening, I returned from my riceless wilderness, and ate rice – not Korean style, though.

Instead, I made my peculiar “Italian stir fry” where I started with some onions and lots of garlic and oregano and basil, stir fried it in some canola, added brocolli with some precooked rice that was getting long in tooth in the rice cooker, then a dollop of red sauce. It is a bit like what Americans call Spanish rice. The red sauce held the rice grains together making them easier to eat.

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Caveat: After Exhilaration… Exhaustion

After the exhilaration of the first two days of post-hospital wears off, I begin to feel the tiredness lurking beneath. After pushing too hard, maybe, today, I feel downright exhausted. The kind of “you’re sick and recovering exhausted” that could be a bad flu but in this case is rather more and less than that at the same time.

pictureStepping out from my apartment, while waiting for Andrew to run back up to get something he’d forgotten, I saw a cicada (right). It was making that mesmerizing loud “weee-wan-wan-waaaan” sound of Asian cicadas.

I stopped by work (KarmaPlus) this morning and straightened accounts with Curt some, and dropped in for 5 minutes with my HSTEPS class, to prove I was alive. I was pleased to be with my students, some of whom I’ve known more than 2 years now.

Then we went to the hospital for an outpatient wound-redressing and short consult. Total charge, after insurance: 200 won (18 cents?). Golly, let me see what I have in my pocket for that.

I learned that I had mis-learned the 10th floor resident doctor’s name, whom I’ve been calling Dr Suh in this here blog – it’s in fact Dr Seok. I learned it when I tried to give him a thank-you card. Oops. I will correct it in the record, but leave this mea culpa here. He is a very kind young man. And I feel like an “old man” that I have to say “kind young man” that way, rather than just “kind man.”

Then, ambitiously, Andrew and I took the bus to Bucheon to see my friend Peter. I thought, how tiring can that be, taking at bus to Bucheon? Once there, very hungry, we splurged on pizza. Which was great – it turned out to be one of the easiest things to eat given my current mouth complications, much as I suspected. The combination of long morning plus bus ride plus heavy lunch, however, left me exhausted. We lounged around Peter’s apartment for a few hours and ended up just coming home.

Now I’m going to take a nap.

Peter’s apartment building allows access to the roof, so despite the smogginess of the day, I took some pictures (below). The building has a rooftop garden.

Looking north (toward Ilsan, way out of view here).

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Looking west.

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Looking south(-ish … maybe more like southeast).

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Looking east.

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Looking at Andrew and Peter.

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Looking at a charming rooftop tree.

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caveat: photo from orbit 22

always cheerful as she bustles about with her mops and bags and buckets, this is my favorite of the cleaning staff. she seemed very surprised at my desire to include her in my picture-taking mania. i tried to tell her in my bad korean that she helped a lot, cleaning floors or bathrooms or bagging up laundry. she ran away from my camera but i lingered patiently and so she came back and smiled.

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caveat: last days

this nurse is named ayeong. she surprised me very much last night. we were talking about the fact that today was my last day, and unexpectedly she said “ill tell you secret. tomorrow is my last day too.” of course i was very shocked but we ended up having two very long conversations, last night and this morning.

shes been at the hospital for 3 years. i learned some things about workplace politics at elite research hospitals in korea. shes burned out – she said shes going to find an easier hospital to work at. she has been very kind and always utterly professional. i feel sorry shes leaving NCC but i was lucky to have her as a nurse on her last month here. i hope she finds an ideal job.

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caveat: photo from orbit 21

mr kim, my longest-lasting roommate by far, checked out a few hours ago. actually, there had been some conflict early on, as his relatives and friends developed a mania for preaching aggressively to the room and its inhabitants. but even at the least pleasant i never had problems with mr kim himself . . when he interacted with me at all it was always a weak wave or salute or short pleasantry.

the interesting thing that happened was that as his post op condition improved, the preachy relatives got more pleasant and even friendly. we gifted them some fruit one time and i tried hard to be a respectful neighbor. stress and fear can drive good people to moments of regrettable action. at his exit hour the 76 year old mr kim was spry and dapper, changed into a dress shirt and slacks.

the picture is from earlier, when we got the mrs to offer a smile.

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caveat: photo from orbit 20

this is the head nurse for the ward. like all head nurses, shes a hardass despite her diminutive stature – she lurks and rules with an iron fist. but she has a remarkable bedside manner – she interacts personally with every patient in the ward at least twice a day, she knows all their stories and she has clearly reviewed everyones file.

further, when i was prepping for surgery last thursday, and andrew and curt were running late coming back from having gone to lunch, as i lay there nervous and scared as one is before going into surgery, she held my hand and pattered trivially for almost 20 minutes before the orderly wheeled my guerney into the elevator for the trip to the fourth floor.

later, i tried to tell her that she was a very kind person. she was adamant: i am NOT a kind person. but she kept that tight enigmatic smile on her face.

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caveat: photo from orbit 17

something of the desolation of the wards corridors at 440 am, the reek of high humid summer outside detectable despite air conditioners (the bizarre korean institutional habit of opening windows while running air conditioners obviously contributing), i began experiencing strong memories of middle-of-the-night cleaning or “guard” duties during basic training at fort jackson, south carolina, in july of 1990.

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caveat: 조용행 선생님 잘 가세요

mr cho, my best friend by far that ive made in the cancer ward, checked out today.

i never imagined i would feel jealousy for people with colon cancer, but its by far the most common cancer being treated on the 10th floor (i cant speak for the other floors), and they have a veritable assembly line set up. even with complications, mr cho only stayed 10 days, and mr park was through in 7 days flat. meanwhile i languish here, watching the comings and goings of roommates and caregivers.

i will miss mr cho but feel confident that i will stay in touch with him. he and his wife were among the kindest and most inquisitive people i have met here. i wish them and their family the best. here is a picture of his wife, him (already in civvies) and me.

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caveat: photo from orbit 12

this nurse is the best nurse of all – shes a clown (in this picture shes climbing on the counter) and shes a goofball and she talks to me in the most adorable korean baby talk that i find incredibly easy to understand and she tolerates my strange korean with smiles and effort at understanding. shes a natural-born language teacher.

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caveat: photo from orbit 10

what better way to show my okayitude than some mugging for the camera with some favorite nurses?

this nurse is the “serious one” and it was hard to get her to pose. shes good for quick, efficient results.

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caveat: photos from orbit 9

mr park was an awesome and inspiring neighbor. he was not talkative but very strong willed. he was always pushing himself despite evident pain and discomfort. once he was lying in bed and suddenly he bounded up like a martial artist on meth and killed a fly in mid flight with a pillowcase, snap!

he checked out today. i will miss watching his facial expressions in response to the preachy familys discourses.

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caveat: caregiving

an observation in an email from my friend bob made me realize there is probably a lot about undergoing medical treatment here in korea that is quite different from what similar treatment in the US would involve, that i have either failed to explain or have elided over.

bob was mentioning when i undergo speech therapy (for the tongue) or occupational therapy (for the right arm). i think it unlikely i will experience anything like these US concepts. the doctor tells me things to do – move your tongue like so or move your fingers like so and asks if ive been doing them later, and thats the extent of it.

patients are expected to be much more autonomous and self-providing, because the patient includes the family caregivers. patients without caregivers end up hiring them – a bit like hiring a home hospice worker to come help you in the hospital. every bed has a cot next it, and those cots are almost always occupied by caregivers – family, friends or paid workers NOT on the hospital staff. the cot by my bed is occupied by andrew, now – and was occupied by peter my first night out of icu.

an example of “caregiving”: the hospital doesnt provide for patient hygiene. caregivers handle bedpans, spongebaths, emptying and maintaining various external subtance receptacles, etc. if the hospital has to step in its begrudgingly and at extra charge.

because of these caregivers, my hospital room has 5 beds but arguably 10 or 11 inhabitants. its crowded and like a campout.

patients are quite autonomous. for example, i am only escorted to “clinics” in the event their location is new to me. otherwise a nurse will say “go see dr ryu” and im expected to go to the elevator, get to the second floor, and find my way across the building to where his work area is.

andrew attached the flowerpot gifted to me by my friend seungbae to the top of my iv stand. i was a bit sceptical – i imagine a nurse oh dont do that. but the head nurses reaction was only 예쁘구나 [oh pretty – not sure i spelled the korean right].
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caveat: pre breakfast

the charm of the hardcore, strictly korean menus of the hospital food has worn off. partly, since im still avoiding spicy food, that means the food thats left to me ends up pretty bland. but the big problem is that it turns out that the “tiny grains of rice” model of food is singularly maladapted to the demands of retraining my tongue. i do better with creamy substances or with things in discrete bite sized chunks. the grains of rice drift around my mouth uncontrolled and sometimes end up in my airways.

so yesterday we brainstormed some things that might be easier to eat, and andrew tromped off to homeplus and shopped last night.

this morning on waking i had a mini pre breakfast of a sliced plum and some yogurt. it was much less stressful than rice.

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caveat: medical horror genre (graphic image may prove disturbing)

for the sake of completeness i include the following. im NOT playing around – this is not for the squeamish.

in reverse order, i underwent two procedures today that indicated supposed progress or at the least a battle against retrogression.

second, they drained around 200cc of pus from the somewhat infected wound on my neck. it was painless, since severed nerves in that region leave everything numb.

before that, first, i had the splint removed and wound redressed on the donor site on my right forearm. it looks pretty gross but theres zero infection and its healing well. now instead of a cast i have just a loose bandage – just when id gotten used to using my forearm as a table.

here is a picture of my forearm. the round scoop of skin and muscle were used to build my new tongue. modern medicine is amazing.

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