This Week+ in South Korea: March 20-30, 2025

(Note: in this post I’m giving myself some grace and absolving myself of all misspelling guilt cuz I just can’t right now)

When we last saw our hero she was enjoying her unclogged toilet (sans plastic utensils) and setting her alarm for early Thursday to go to the opthalmology clinic.

Thursday, March 20

Took the bus (it was really nice riding in cars while in the US) to the eye clinic. Did not get lost. Had a tiny conversation in Korean with the security guard in the office building. The receptionist was super nice and I didn’t wait long for them to start their barrage of tests. After all the tests I saw the doctor who confirmed that I do, indeed, have a detached retina and need surgery. Then they put some drops in my eyes, I waited for 40 minutes, they did a couple more tests…and the doctor repeated his earlier diagnosis that I needed surgery to reattach the retina. Don’t really know what the extra drops and waiting were for, but, whatever. He gave me the referal letter so I can be covered by insurance when I go to the hospital.

I messaged the hospital right away to say I had the referal, please schedule me in as soon as possible. The earliest available appt is next Wednesday. Another week! And that’s just for another opthalmologist to probably repeat the same tests I already had and give me the same verdict, and then I have to wait for a surgery date. Don’t they understand that Dr. Google said I will go blind?!

Went to class. We’re three weeks into the term and this is only the 4th time I’ve come to class. I’m way behind. I’ve missed a test.

The walk to and from class did me in.

Friday, March 21

My sleep is still a little messed up. I’m always tired, I fall asleep as soon as I close my eyes, but I wake up at 3am.

We’re having a test this afternoon so I scrambled to study a bit.

Spring is trying to come and I walked to class without even a jacket.

The test went better than I’d expected, but it was part lucky guesses.

Saturday, March 12

It’s a beautiful day. But I stayed in all day and napped and rested. Until 6pm when G and I went next door for ice cream bars and some veranda time. I’m glad that time of year is back.

SO. Since nothing much is going on, and I’ve cleared it with Katie, I can tell you my “after Korea” plans. Originally when I finished school and the tourist visa ended in August, I’d planned to just continue on my merry world-traveling way: a quick visa-hop trip to Japan to start my Korean tourist visa, a month on Jeju-do, an island off the southern coast of Korea, then Oct-Nov-Dec in Japan for fall foliage, Thailand and/or Vietnam for the cold winter months of Jan-Feb, then back to Japan for March-April-May for cherry blossoms, and so on. I worked on the math of all the options for several weeks, I even made a spreadsheet so I could compare everything easily: air fares and airbnb costs, etc.

The most awkward and expensive part of the plan was getting out of Korea by Aug 23, having to fly to Japan and stay a few days, so I could come right back as a tourist….there was just no real efficient way to do that part and I need to be really frugal going forward to make this next phase work…and in the end I decided that when it’s time to leave Korea after my student visa ends, I will just go to the US for a couple months. Stay with Katie for about 6 weeks and just REST and reset, try to get up to NY to visit friends for a week, then stay a couple weeks with family in San Antonio, then a couple weeks with family in Los Angeles…then at the end of October, leave from LA to go to Japan for Nov-Dec. I’ve already booked the airbnb for Nov 1-December 31 so I’ll be in Osaka, Japan for fall foliage and Christmas, then I’ll head to southeast asia where it is warm for the winter and super, super cheap.

This is all contingent on health and finances, of course. I’m worried about the future of social security and Medicare. But until something actually happens, I’m going to continue planning my world tour, ha ha.

My Japan airbnb is cute. It’s in Daito City,about halfway between Osaka and Kyoto. It has a little kitchen, with a window over the sink that faces a nearby mountain. It’s on the third floor and has an actual balcony – and I LOVE a balcony. Big closet, and a bathroom with deep bathtub. Hang on, I’ll get some pictures…

I’m so excited to have a bathtub! There’s a couple laundromats nearby…and the train station (at street level, no stairs!) is a 2-minute walk, and there are little restaurants, cafes, and convenience stores in walking distance. It’s unfortunate there’s no elevator – that’s something most of the Japan apartments in this price range don’t have. But I’ll just take the stairs slow and at least at the end of my climb, I’m home and can collapse on the bed and sweat in the privacy of my own home.

Japan is more expensive than Korea…this apartment is $750/month, which compared to US rents is extremely low…but it’s $200/month more than I’m paying where I am now. Hopefully my southeast asia stays will help offset that with their very low rents.

So that’s my plan for the next year or so…I have time to decide where I want to be next summer (2026). Maybe back to the US for a visit…or Europe, they both cost about the same as far as airfare, surprisingly.

At some point I want to visit Costa Rica, not cuz I feel particularly drawn to it (I don’t care for a year-round warm climate), but because it has the lowest barrier to entry of all the countries, for an American with a very low budget who wants to stay for an extended period of time. Some of the countries that have a low cost of living (like the southeast asian countries), have high “so you want to be a resident?” costs, like $10-50,000 in their country’s bank…or a higher monthly minimum income.

Albania is another country I’m considering for longer term stay. Longer stays are more economical because there are fewer travel (airfare) costs and usually longer leases allow afford you lower monthly rents. I wish I could stay longer in Korea or Japan, but their tourist visas are only for 90 days (though you can visit two times/year for 90 days, just not consecutively).

Sunday, March 23

Quiet day. Stayed in. Studied a teeny bit. Read til I fell asleep. Trying to clean up and put away the last of the mess left from packing and unpacking.

My new friend J is leaving Korea today to go back to her home country 🙁  And I’m back to no fun “doing stuff” friend.

Back to class tomorrow. My plan is to get up and out and go to a cafe to study in the morning, then take an uber back here that will drop me at the base of the hill, which at least cuts off half my walk…so I’m not already heart-palpitaty, hip-tired by the time I get to the hill. I mean to do this twice a week. I’d love to uber there every day but it’s too $$$.

Monday, March 24

Well, the day did not go according to plan. I woke up to even worse vision…so I went to the emergency room. I was there all day, they did many tests, they said a lot of words, and my surgery is scheduled for Wednesday morning. I go tomorrow (Tuesday) morning to meet with a psychiatrist (cuz of the wekbutrin?) and then get admitted in the afternoon. Surgery Wednesday morning, hopefully discharge Thursday morning and then I have to spend the next week not going anywhere or doing anything, but sitting or laying with my face down. Good times. It’s hard to type so that’s it for now…and hopefully when I come back I’ll be able to see better. Oh, they’re doing the cataract surgery at the same time as the retina reattachment.

Tuesday, March 25

Okay, gonna try to do this via talk-to-text, is too hard to see the laptop screen.

This morning I had an appt w a psychiatrist at the hospital who gave me a little (unappreciated) lecture about how 6 years is too long to be on welbutrin. He asked if I’d ever taken a break, and I said, yes, three months in the first fall I was here in Korea and it was NOT GOOD. Hyperventilating, couldn’t take a full breath, heart pounding, crying at the drop of a hat. This medication is life-changing for me. I guess he just needed to say his piece cuz he let it go and I moved onto the next appt.

Neurology?? That’s what it said on my schedule sheet. Anyway, this Dr said that my kidney function was greatly decreased (down to 30%}, a significant change from last summer when I had the kidney stone removed. Her concern was possible kidney disease, I asked so what do we do… she said nothing for now but come back in three months and we’ll check it again.

Now I don’t have the greatest memory in the world and I’m really not good at remembering all my medical stuff. I really should check with my old boss, but I feel like in 2021 when I had my last lithotripsy in New York and then part of the follow up was I had to drink all that water while I was in the city and then I had such a tough time getting back out of the city cause I had to pee and couldn’t find a bathroom. Do you remember that? Anyway, I feel like at that time I was told I had only 20% function of one kidney. So if it’s now 30%, doesn’t that seem like an improvement? Or at the very least that it’s not getting worse? Anyway, I go back to see her in June.

Then I went back home and just rested until I had to get up and pack my little overnight bag and be back at the hospital for 3 o’clock admission.

When I got back, they went through all the testing again that I had just done on Monday when I went through the emergency room except now I was in the uncomfortable hospital costume that doesn’t fit and being around all the people so that was very awkward and uncomfortable. Period like the pants kept slipping down and the top only the top two buttons button so there was always part of my stomach showing so I had to walk around while I was in and out of the wheelchair, clutching my shirt closed around my stomach with my hands. And sweating and just ucch.

Oh, the surgeon said the retina was even less attached today than it was jst the day before (when I did the tests thru the ER), almost completely detached…and I was like you can still fix it right?? She said she’d do the best she could.

When I got back to the room, I was so hot. It was so hot in there and I asked one of the nurses if I could get like a picture of water and she said no we don’t provide that you have to bring your own water or you could go down to the convenience store on the first floor and get a bottle of water. I’m like you really should tell people that before they come to the hospital, or you could’ve told me that when they took me down in the wheelchair, I could’ve just run into the convenience store as we wheeled past it, but now I was exhausted and tired of walking around with my body hanging out of my clothes so I just kept refilling the Dixie cup they gave me from the bathroom sink. Sigh. 

Surgery was scheduled for 8:30 AM the next day I knew they were gonna do some tests before that so I didn’t really know what time they were gonna come for me, it didn’t really matter cause I didn’t really sleep anyway it was so hot and I was so uncomfortable in the costume.

Wednesday, March 26

In the end, they did not take me for more tests in the morning, but they did come get me in the wheelchair at 7:30 and took me down to surgery where I sat in the starting gate with all the other people waiting to go to surgery till about 8:15, listening to Beatles Muzak.

Let it be oh let it be.

I was in operating room 10, which seemed a good omen, A PERFECT TEN!!! They helped me clamber up onto the table and they gave me like slow anesthesia so just feeling nice and relaxed until they put the thing over my face and they’re like all right. You’re gonna be out in a co….

And the next thing I knew I was waking up about 90 minutes later and it was all done. I was freezing and my mouth was dry and they wouldn’t let me drink. I had gauze and a patch and like a goggle lens over my right eye so I couldn’t see out of it at all and I kept like really concentrating on what I was seeing out of my left eye and feeling like it doesn’t seem very different, maybe it needs to like Rest a little bit before it comes into focus. I sort of thought I’d read about cataract surgery that it was like instantaneous so i was a little concerned about that.

Went back to my room, still on the IV. I was told not to sleep or drink until noon, but too lay with my face down. And I wasn’t going to get lunch but I would get dinner. I hadn’t eaten since last night dinner so I was pretty hungry.

It was just a long day. It was physically uncomfortable because of the way I had to lay or sit. I’ve heard of people having the surgery in the US and they get like this bed or chair where their positioned in a facedown position, but their face goes into like a massage chair circle thing so they don’t have to hold their head up and there’s like a little shelf below the face thing so they can put their laptop or a book – I couldn’t do cause I couldn’t read, but I could’ve put my phone or laptop down there, but they don’t do that here they don’t offer that here not at this hospital Anyway. At some point when she was reconnecting the IV because mine kept bleeding. I was like wait. And when I was disconnected, I took off the Hospital costume top and I put my comfy shirt on. She didn’t seem happy but she was like right. She wasn’t gonna fight with me, and at some point later in the evening I changed the pants into my comfy stretchy pants and that she was like you really have to put the pants back on because if you’re in total like regular people clothes, no one’s gonna know you’re patient.. And I didn’t say it, but I was like I’m in a hospital room, I’m only going back-and-forth from my bed to the bathroom, I have an iv in and I’m pushing an IV rolly cart, in my slippers. You can’t tell him a patient?? so I just kept saying next time I get up I’ll change and I put that off until the following morning when I had to go see the surgeon.

Thursday, March 27

They took me down fairly early to go to a bunch of the same tests again and then to see the surgeon at least this time I was in my comfy shirt, and my belly wasn’t hanging out, I asked her why my left eye didn’t seem any better and she said that’s cause I didn’t do anything to your left eye! I had been under the impression they were doing the cataract surgery on both eyes while I was there and under, but she said no they never work on both eyes at the same time just in case something goes wrong and then you would have no eyes. Which makes sense but doesn’t seem like what I heard or understood beforehand. Anyway, I told her that I really couldn’t see out of the right eye at all. It was first of all it was so swollen. It’s hard just to open it and when I like force it open a little bit the opaque black circle is now a semi-opaque gray circle and the part of my eye I can’t see out of it’s really blurry and distorted. She explained that she put a gas bubble in on behind whatever the eye that’s supposed to help with the recovery or holding the new retina in place I don’t really I’m not really sure (sidenote the surgeon speaks decent English not 100% but pretty good but with an accent and she’s speaking medical-ese, so part Korean part English part medical is still hard to understand so in hindsight, I realize there were a lot of misunderstandings about what was gonna happen). Anyway, this gas bubble is gonna be there for a month. I think she said and have you ever had a blister on your eye? I know that sounds gross, but I can remember being young and when my allergies would really be bad if I rubbed my eyes a lot, I would literally create a blister on my eye. This is like that times 23%. So I think even when my vision clears in a few days (hopefully), it’s still gonna be all distorted because of looking through this bubble thing, so while I thought I was gonna be back to school in a little over a week… I don’t know what good going to school is if I can’t read. The best thing for me reading wise is my phone because it’s very well lit and I can hold it up very close to my eye and we’re talking about you know pretty short amounts of text at a time, a picture, caption or a comment, I’m not reading War and Peace on my cell phone. Trying to read more text on my laptop is hard because that’s a difficult focal length for me and trying to read anything printed on paper like in a textbook or directions on how to take my 97 pills and eye drops, very, very, very difficult. Very. So I don’t really know how I’m doing school. The dean has seemed OK with me missing like the 10 to 12 days. She just told me to document get documentation of all the days I was missing proving that they were for medical reasons. And I have that but this next period of time where just I can do stuff I just can’t see to read… I don’t really know how that plays in to me being allowed to stay on the student visa. I can’t really worry that much about it. It’s just something I’m thinking about. It’s nothing I can do about it.

Anyway, I got released about 11 AM. I guess, a building friend came and met me because they said I had to have somebody come get me but in reality they didn’t actually check so I could’ve gone home alone cause I got an Uber anyway so it’s just sitting outside waiting for the car, but I was very happy to get home and at least be able to lay face down on my own bed versus the hospital bed.

I ordered a bucket of KFC for dinner so I would have food for several days.

Friday, March 28

I’m playing catch-up and writing this on Sunday. I don’t really remember what I did on Friday, oh yeah, nothing.

I’ve just sort of gotten myself into a pattern of I have several different positions I try to stay in for an hour at a time, the sitting ones hurt my back pretty quickly laying down one hurts my elbows and my upper back really quickly, and I’m probably spending more time face up than I’m supposed to be but when you’re by yourself And you don’t have someone to do things for you when you have to go downstairs and pick up your groceries and bring them up and put them away and prepare your food and wash the dishes and blah blah blah. I mean I gotta do that stuff so. I try to do sitting positions in the morning and then around noon or one after I do my noon or one drops and pills, then I lay down in bed with the earbuds in and I put on an audiobook and I inevitably fall asleep and my head turns, but I can’t help that cause I’m asleep.

Saturday, March 29

More of the same. You know me I love being in my room or in my house. Usually, I’d be really happy to have someone say You have to stay inside for a week, but when you have all these like specifications like you can only sit in these two certain positions and you can’t read or really look at the computer much, it’s not that much fun.

Sunday, March 30

I’m pretty sure this is today… I’m pretty sure today is Sunday. My eye can open a teeny bit more every day but it’s like default is still being shut like I have to really work at holding it open and then it’s uncomfortable in my vision as much worse so as soon as I’ve held it open for a couple seconds, I just let it shut again. The swelling has gone down a little bit, but it’s still very tender like when I put drops in and then like gently rub your eyelid, that’s sore. Or if I look to the left/right/up/down with my eyeball, that hurts. Amd sometimes when it’s open it feels like there’s something scratchy in there. But that goes away as soon as I close it again.

Tomorrow I have an appointment with the surgeon a follow up and I guess then I’ll get some more question answered like how long before I can actually see out of this eye. And can I get documentation to cover all the time that I’m not actually in the hospital but that I can’t see for?

I don’t really foresee anything more interesting happening today so I’m just gonna wrap this up now. I’ve probably taken a couple pictures with my phone during the week. I don’t think anybody wants to see the pictures the daily pictures of my eyes so I can see the progress so I won’t share those Maybe the first one.

Yeah. Good times.

PS: I showered. And washed my hair. Verrrry Carefully. I hadda do it.

The End. Sigh.