Going to the Doctor

I was sick last week.

After putting up with it for a few days, I started losing sleep and coughing up phlegm.  That's when I knew I needed to go see a doctor.

The last time I went to a doctor was over 2 years ago, so I was curious to see what--if anything--had changed about the experience in Korea.

I walked over to the building I used to live in, since it has a small variety of medical clinics on the 4th floor.

The medical office where I had gone before was empty, which alarmed me for a minute as I was feeling bad and didn't want to go looking around for another office.  However, on the same floor I found an E.N.T. office (ear, nose, and throat), just what I needed.

The woman at the reception desk (maybe the doctor's wife?) spoke some English, and asked me for my medical insurance card, which I gave to her along with my foreigner's i.d.  She then asked me to wait, though that only lasted for 5 minutes as the office wasn't busy.

I was ushered by a nurse into a side diagnostic area, where the doctor was putting on a facial mask.  After being sat in a chair that reminded me of a dentist's office, the doctor started rattling away in Korean.

I apologized for my lack of language skills, and he smoothly switched to English; though he had to think about what he said, his English was quite good.

He asked me what was wrong, and I told him I had had a fever and was plagued with some body aches and pains, but the main thing was that I had developed a cough and was congested.  I had also been experiencing some allergy problems from the changing spring weather (and/or yellow dust from China).

The doctor listened to my chest breathing and then--a first for me--inserted a stick-like camera into my nasal passages to check them out.  He showed me the mucus build-up and told me that I needed a round of antibiotics (which I knew and was what I wanted to hear;  since I used to have to wrestle a bit with American doctors to get antibiotics, I am always worried that I will have the same problem in Korea, though that has never happened).

He typed the prescription into a computer as he was talking to me, and told me about the pills he was going to prescribe, that I would need to return in 5 days for another visit, and that, before I left, he was going to have the nurse perform a saline rinse.

I had never had a saline rinse before, so I was curious.  Basically, the nurse sat me down over a sink and plugged a hose into one nostril.  She flipped a switch and a light stream of saline went into one nostril, came out the other, and flushed into the sink.  Then she switched to the other nostril.  It was quick, only a minute or two.

So, ten minutes later, I was back at the front desk, where I paid the equivalent of $6.00 and was given the printed prescription.

I then headed next door, literally speaking; on the same 4th floor, next to the doctor's office, there is a pharmacy the fills the prescriptions for all of the clinics there.  I had to wait about ten minutes to get my prescription filled, and then a pharmacist explained to me, in English, about the medicine.  I got antibiotics, a digestive aid, and pain medication (4 different pills).  5 days worth.  Total cost = $6.

An interesting thing about Korean prescriptions is that they are usually packaged at the pharmacy into individual dosage packets

That makes taking the medicine easy, but clearly such a practice would never be accepted in the U.S. as each individual pill is not documented (sometimes you can have 4-5 pills in the dosage packets), the packets are obviously not childproof, etc.

So, I saw a doctor and got my medicine, fast and easy, for a total cost of $12.

If I wasn't on the national health plan (which I co-pay $80 a month for), the visit would have cost more, but probably not more than $10.

I go back to see the doctor in two days, and I will probably have to pay close to the same amount again.

No problem there.  I'm feeling better and I like the way the Korean system works.