Down With The Sickness

Homesickness has been a rare occurrence recently, especially since Natalie has been around and I’ve been in Korea long enough to get accustomed to the way things work around here. However, there is something that can put a spanner in the works and that’s getting sick, as in physically sick. It hasn’t been a particularly pleasant week.

After eating a stupendous amount of seafood in Incheon last weekend (oysters, welchs, sea snails) I was relieved when the day after there were no signs of food poisoning. However, the day after that I woke up feeling like someone was building a house in my stomach. I even had to phone in sick on the Monday to try and recover. After a morning of kneeling over my toilet I decided enough was enough and I headed out to the pharmacy. Language barriers are tough at the best of times but when you want to do nothing but sit in a ball of your own self pity, scraping at the walls and dreaming of a time when you didn't feel like hell on Earth, you’re not in the mood for making outlandish hand gestures. I had no choice. I put on a performance in the pharmacy and got across what my condition was to the pharmacist. He gave me a box of pills and two little drinks (which were like milk of magnesia but tasted better). Medication is cheap but is dispensed rather liberally and I could have done with a lot more alas the medication got to work pretty quickly and come Tuesday I was back in the rat race.

The middle of the week swam by quite nicely, I certainly didn’t feel like my usual self but I didn’t feel terrible either. Friday was a different story though and for some reason I woke up feeling nearly as bad as I did on Monday. I guess I still hadn’t shaken it and had also ran out of drugs. I trekked on like a trooper but spent this weekend feeling rather sorry for myself. I’m feeling a little better right now but something is still definitely up.

In the UK when I get ill it’s an easy process, I go to the doctor, he tells me what’s wrong, and I get on with my life. Saying that, I can’t remember the last time I was ill in the UK. However, its a whole different ball of stress in Korea. It was hard to explain to my co-workers what was wrong with me. It was hard to explain why I didn’t want lunch. It was hard to build up the enthusiasm to do anything other than lounge about like a dog. It was hard to find food that didn't turn my stomach upside down. Alas, I hope I’m on the mend now and will hopefully have more exciting things to write about in the coming weeks.

Down with the sickness. Keep calm and carry on, right?