A psychologist I saw during my exceptionally troubled adolescence once told me that I would be a "late bloomer, perhaps in my thirties," and as luck would have it, she was correct in her estimation.
But neither of us could have seen the consequences of her prediction. As it came to pass, seven years ago, I left my flowering place with both a defective body and a broken heart.
But I did not leave of my own accord. Nor did I leave as a full-bloomed flower. No, I left a weak, broken, and much trampled on briar rose, full of prickles among the sweet. I left because there were no options left for me. I left because my mortality caught up with me.
Leaving my horrible job and even more horrible housing during my last few moths in Korea was at first, quite exhilarating. When I moved back to Seoul from the sordid rural community I had been living in, a great burden was lifted from me. No more military jets coursing directly over my head at all hours of the day and night. No more hookers and johns harassing me as I walked by the anmas ("happy ending" massage parlors) and dog-meat soup restaurants to get to my squalid little apartment building. No more random and whimsical demands from ill-placed administrators. No more apartments falling down around my ears. No more.
Who wouldn't be happy?
And, for a glorious few weeks, I was - madly, ridiculously, inanely - ecstatic about my new living situation and a new job where my years of experience were actually respected. A bit of nausea and light vomiting on the first day of the job? No problem, it is probably nerves, or something I ate. Never mind that I was not prone to stomach problems from nerves. Well, no matter.
I started going to the gym regularly, and enjoyed it for the first time in my life. For once, I was seeing RESULTS from my hard work. I watched the needle on the scale drop rapidly week by week as I continued my regime.
Never mind that I was only eating one meal a day, which sometimes wouldn't stay down. Never mind that every meal ended with electrical current zapping through my intestines and stomach, doubling me over with the pain. Never mind that I had to suddenly excuse myself during class on several occasions to void the food that refused to stay down. Never mind that I was occasionally prone on the floor of the bathroom, wondering why I couldn't keep enough food in my stomach to give me "just enough strength to teach tomorrow." I would just push through it, as I always did.
But, inevitably, one day I couldn't.
I remember very little of my last few weeks in South Korea.
I remember going to a well-intentioned, but as it turned out useless doctor, who did his best to diagnose the mysterious illness that prevented me from eating. Fatty-liver? I was a bit overweight, but not anywhere near obese (or a drinker). Pills for that. Acid reflux? Upper endoscopy, without pain meds or sedation. Inconclusive, but pills for that. Continuous nausea? Pills for that - completely ineffective.
I remember the doctor asking me three times to take a pregnancy test, even though there was no possible reason to suspect pregnancy as a cause of my malaise and primarily in-the-morning sickness. I remember getting angry at the implications made by the doctor, because all Western women have loose morals, right?
I remember the doctor asking me if I had been through any stress recently. Well, yes, I had. I had moved from rural Korea back to Seoul. A sweet romance had been cut short by a sudden deployment back to America. Tears had coursed down my face, adding to the misery from my constant nausea and weakness. The doctor yelled at me for getting emotional, then hurriedly scrawled something on his pad. "I will give you something I give women whose husbands have cheated on them."
HUH? I must be imagining things, I thought. He hooked me to an IV, then moved me to a curtained alcove. I woke up four hours later.
I took the prescription and stood in line at the pharmacy. A batty old Korean woman suddenly burst in to the pharmacy and began yelling at me in Korean for a good ten minutes. I gazed at her through bleary eyes, not comprehending. She moved like she was going to grab me, but a young man blocked her. After a few nasty words said in my general direction, she left. The other Koreans in the pharmacy gave me a wide berth, as the pharmacist hurriedly passed me my pill packets.
In Korea, you never know what medication you are getting because they are dispensed in "doses" which are separated in perforated plastic bags for each time you are supposed to take them. If the pharmacist is feeling helpful, which is not very often, he or she might write "AM, NOON, PM" in permanent marker on each bag. But that is all the help you get.
I took my first dose of medication and waited. And waited. And fell asleep.
I remember waking up and sensing, in the far right corner of my bedroom, a presence in the air. It was not a physical presence or entity, but I could feel myself moving towards...something warm. Oddly enough, I could also hear Julie Andrews singing "Feed the Birds" as I moved towards the presence.
NO.
I stopped moving.
Oh well, I guess I am having a really interesting hallucination - no problem!
And I slept.
I woke up on the floor of the bathroom. Ah, so cool, I thought.
And I slept.
I woke up in my bed. I made a cup of tea and sat at my kitchen table.
On the table, there was a plane ticket, but I had no idea where it came from.
And I slept.
I called my family. Several times. I only remember actually calling one time, but my family now assures me it was several times. In the middle of the night.
And I slept.
My family, meanwhile, began making plans to get me out of Korea.
That Sunday, I visited a hellfire-and-brimstone Southern Baptist church in Seoul. I remember talking rapidly to the startled pastor, but not what I said. I think I asked for prayer. I remember nothing after that - not how I got home, not what the pastor said - nothing.
I called a few members of my home church for help with navigating the Korean medical system, people whom I had come to love and who I thought might be willing to assist me, but no one responded to my phone calls. The pastor of the church kindly recommended going to a different doctor at a good teaching hospital.
I came to my senses on Monday morning, with what seemed to be a wicked hangover. I made an appointment with the American doctor at the teaching hospital - I believe his name was Dr. Linton. He took one look at me, and asked me to hand over the pills I had been prescribed. He shook his head when he saw the excessive amount of pills and the dosages I had been taking. "You are extremely over-medicated." He hooked me up to an IV for replenishing my fluids, then sent a medical resident periodically observe me while I sweated out all the medication I had been on.
Later that night, curious, I read all the printing on the sides of my pills and researched them on the Internet. There were two extremely strong liver function pills, a few herbal remedies of various kinds, an anti-inflammatory, a full dose of Paxil...and a half dose of Xanax.
I returned to the hospital the next day for another IV infusion of fluids, as I still could not eat. I had not really eaten a full meal for almost two months, in fact. I underwent several more tests, but the diagnosis was still unconfirmed. I had severe GERD, complicated by a helicobacter pylori infection, complicated by chronic gastritis. I was so weak at this point, I couldn't really comprehend what he was saying, "You might want to consider returning to America."
I returned to my apartment that evening. I looked around at my warm, but well-maintained Korean style apartment. It was the first apartment I had ever called my own. The November air had turned chilly outside, but the ondol heating beneath my floor warmed my feet as I settled in for the night. There is nothing so satisfying as ondol heating in the winter, I thought. Or Korean style porridge. Or a hot sweet potato from a street vendor to carry for warmth.
I didn't want to think about leaving the life I had finally learned to love. Not when I had struggled so long to find my place in this world. Not when I had tasted true happiness and contentment for the first time in my life. Not while I still had life in my body...but what kind of life? Clearly, I could not depend on my friends, my doctors, or my family so far away.
Up until this moment I had never NEEDED to depend on anyone.
But time was running out. It was time to do the inevitable - or die of stubbornness. The plane ticket winked at me on my kitchen table. I had a brief flashback to waiting in a lobby at a travel agency. Maybe, on a subconscious level, I had known that this was the end of my journey.
I called my family that night and told them I would be home for Thanksgiving. Permanently.
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