The End of the Honeymoon

WARNING: THE FOLLOWING POST MAY NOT BE SUITABLE FOR THE SQUEAMISH



Over the past few days, I have become good friends with the toilet at my goshitel.

I've been visiting the toilet at least ten times a day, after all. I hope that the worst is over, but only God knows for sure.

Last week, the Monday after I visited Nam June Paik's TV tower, I thought I had it bad when I woke up with aches and a continuously runny nose.

I had no idea.

This past Monday I was tired and a bit warmer than usual, but I attributed it to lying in blazing hot rooms and soaking in piping hot tubs at the jimjilbang (Korean sauna). When I woke up on Tuesday, I realized it was something more. I awoke to find myself unusually hot. Not only that, but my stomach was also churning like crazy. I figured that I could take a Tylenol and worry about the problem later. When I got to my first class I was soaked in sweat, and as I took attendance, beads of sweat dripped off my hair onto the attendance sheet, despite the fact that the A/C was blasting away. Despite taking an unusual number of trips to the bathroom during that class, I figured I would be fine for the next class. Unfortunately, by the second class the Tylenol had begun to wear off and not only did I feel drained, I had a bad case of the chills. I ended up letting the class work on homework and play games for the last half hour. (I think my students think I'm nicer when I'm sick.)

I took the rest of the day off and rode the subway home, where I basically crashed for the rest of the day. I would wake up every hour or so to rush to the bathroom then fall back asleep. My condition reached a low point that afternoon, when I woke up feeling like I was on fire, my head feeling as though it were both spinning and being stabbed. Water made me feel nauseous, and solid food was hardly any better. I finally felt the full effects of being on my own in a foreign country, as I realized that I was miles (excuse me, kilometers) from any friends rather than being down the block or next door. I tried to watch TV, but it made me want to throw up, so I just slept instead.

My fever eventually broke that night, but my intestinal issues did not resolve themselves. My digestive system continued to spew out anything and everything I took into my body. As many of you know, I typically need food about once every two hours, and without any food in my stomach I began to miss the feeling of having a full belly. On Wednesday, I was surprised to find upon reaching for my stomach that it was no longer there. My belly had receded a good two or three inches from its normal width. Over the next few days I would feel the empty space there and just feel depressed. I imagined that I looked like Christian Bale in The Machinist and wondered if he had given himself the flu to look that way.

Wednesday a fellow teacher told me I was giving her a blank stare, which I explained was not a reflection on her but my own state- the hollowness in my eyes reflected the vacuousness of my stomach. Still, I managed to pull through the full day of work, and was rewarded by a gem from my 6th grade Novel Reading class, which has confoundingly been assigned the age-appropriate "Macbeth." I realized that they would not understand or relate to the play at all (and I wanted to space out in class for a bit), so I gave them a creative writing assignment: "Imagine how Macbeth and Lady Macbeth met". The best story involved King Duncan and Macbeth being college friends who would go drinking and playing billiards together. In this story, they would also go out to clubs holding hands, where people would ask if they were homosexual. If only Shakespeare could have read it!

Each morning, I hoped to wake up feeling good again, but my body only took steps instead of leaps. This morning (Thursday), I did feel better, but I was particularly perturbed by the lack of food in my stomach. Some rice porridge seems to have done the trick, however, and I think I'm almost on the other side.

I told myself that once I was able to blog about this traumatic experience, I would be close to recovery. If I were still under the full effects of the virus, I wouldn't want to relive the experience, much less post a blog entry about it. Tonight I looked up the way to say "I'm sick" and "diarrhea" in Korean, and appreciated the fact that this incident prompted me to learn some Korean I wouldn't have otherwise.

I'm thankful that I had friends here in Korea as well or else I probably would have wallowed away in misery.

There's a lot of good stuff to fill in too, between the first Monday I got sick and the second Monday I got sick. But that post will come when it more accurately reflects my mood. The good news is I haven't had to go to the bathroom once since I started writing this post.