Helpless

There are times I feel as helpless as a newborn kitten here in South Korea, and it’s never more so than when I need medical attention.

Wide-eyed, I stumbled into a dentist’s office bearing the confidence-inspiring name, Mint Boo Boo Dental Clinic. In the time it took me to get form the door to the receptionist’s desk, everyone in the clinic was aware there was a foreigner in the house.

“Cleaning,” I typed into my cell phone dictionary. In the past, I’ve typed “bronchitis” and “cold” at other doctors’ offices. I’ve strung together “foot” and “hurt” at the sports medicine clinic, and could come up with nothing but tears when the ear, nose and throat doc told me I needed the internal medicine specialist instead of him. Once, I simply smiled to reveal half a missing tooth.

I present my symptoms and my cell phone dictionary, and then I put myself in their hands hoping they’ll be able to accurately diagnose and cure whatever is incapacitating me that week.

I handed my cell phone to the receptionist. She read the translation smiling and nodding. Wordlessly, I gave her my insurance and alien registration cards – two documents I carry at all times. I couldn’t read the medial forms, so she filled them out for me.

She gestured to a couch, and there I waited until I was ushered into a dental chair. Everyone is wearing gloves. Good. I’ve heard some dubious stories about the lack of hygiene in medical facilities. We foreigners are always pondering the manner in which urine samples are collected here. You pee into a Dixie cup. There’s no lid or label. And then you give it to the nurse, who sets it on a tray with lots of other urine specimens, also uncovered and unlabeled. Sometimes, there are dribbles of urine on the tray. This nurse does not wear gloves. She is also the nurse who draws your blood, which she does with alarming efficiency – God bless her. Sometimes there’s a little bit of blood on the table or wall, next to the urine … but I digress.

The dental hygienist was wearing gloves, and I was happy. Then I saw her poking in someone else’s mouth with the same pair of gloves, and I was less happy. But, there wasn’t much I could do about it at that point, so I said a silent prayer, leaned back and tried my best to relax as she went to work on my teeth.

In less than an hour, I was out of there, breathing a heavy sigh of relief and happy to have another first out of the way.