by Fatty Mortoff 
Daily inconveniences of life as an expat in Korea are quite similar to symptoms of the piles:
it is hard to believe such little things could be such a big pain in the ass!

Don't get me wrong, I do not hate Korea! As a matter of fact I love Korea as much as much as the next die-hard expat. I am happy here. I love my boss, my students, and all the little ankle biters that follow me around to see if "hi" really works with white folks. I eat Korean three times a day, and probably eat more dog than any Korean. I do feel, however, that denial and suppression are  ridiculous ways to cope with anything. We all have our problems here, we all have our opinions, and we all have times when the only way to deal is to simply tell it like it is . . . 

To prove that I am, at least, a half-way objective judge of things both Eastern and Western, I will mention the case of Chinese medicine or Han Yak.  Any expat who has received acupuncture in both East and West knows that Western doctors clearly practice Eastern medicine wrong. I have been to several Chinese medicine doctors both in America and in Korea It is obvious that the methods, approach, attention to necessary detail, and intentions of the Chinese medicine doctors in Korea and America are different, and clearly, the Western approach to Eastern medicine is ridiculous and false. This is because Eastern and Western mindset are different. Living in Korea has taught me how crucial mindset is in the practice of medicine and other methodical skills.

. . . . . so now to our main story . . . .

After being directed into the room by three giggling young nurses, I lay on the examination table for my first ever rectal inspection. Upon the walls of the office hung large pictures of the doctor's family. Alongside these pictures, the detailed diagrams of various types of brown and puckered up rectums. The doctor lubed up the long metal tube, a video apparatus, and shoved it on home. I felt raped, an impulse to squeal. I now know, from this innocent inspection, why it is that convicts are so impressed by the mental message sodomy projects to victims. What effect would years of rectal inspections have on the mental health of this doctor? What nightmares must his wife suffer to satiate the hunger of this doctor's twisted imagination? I remained curled up and prone as the Doc pulled up my drawers, then using the smelly, condom covered tube, he pointed to project images of my anus and its five pink swolen hemorrhoids.

The next day I was wheeled into surgery. I was injected with a large bottle of antibiotics which caused me to vomit larger quantities of day-glo green bile. I mentioned to the doctor my first experience with whiskey, and he giggled happily while rolling me into a prone position for inserting a very long and thin needle into my spinal collumn. The spinal tap did not hurt, and soon a soft wave of numbness splashed through my lower extremities. Morphine?Would I finally get to experience the ecstatic sensations so vividly described in Bill Burrough's book, Junky? But my mind was quite clear and the doctor immediately attempted to yank out my entrails, via my butt-hole. I breathed out and looked about the softly lit metallic room, recalling specific scenes from Jacob's Ladder. My butt cheeks, and then my head, jerked quickly from side to side.

"Can you teach private classes?" the doctor asked while pounding, it sounded like, on a small hammer and nail. I said "uh-huh." He said, "but isn't that illegal?" And I said, "moh lah yoh, I don't know," which again caused Doc to giggle. Then he said, "do you ever suffer discomfort while deffecating?" to which I replied, "sometimes." He said, "constipation? Diarhia? I think you have a sensitive rectum."

The doctor and I discussed age, level, fees and location for a private class, as the pain of the tugging extended into my lowers abdomen. I am man who frequently cries from emotion. I cried at Forrest Gump, Bambi, and Good Will Hunting. I cry when angry at my wife or in any way mentally upset, but until the day of this surgery, I'd never cried from physical pain. At the time of this surgery, I counted single drops of tear, and moaned, babbling obsecenities aimed specifically at Korea and Korean rectal surgeons. I began to think seriously about asking the doctor to just call it quits. "How did you meet your wife?" He asked, "do you like Kimchi?"

As I was wheeled out to my bed, I noticed  that not only could I not feel my lower extremities, but I could not command them to move. I was rolled onto a bed and told that feeling would come back in five hours. The most frightening part of spinal anesthesia is not being able to locate one's penis. I had no idea if my balls were swollen, rapped around my leg or somehow twisted into an unhealthy position. I touched them. It felt as if  I was touching something unconnected, touching large water soaked cotton balls. I still had no clue as to how my balls were reacting to all of this, and it was very, very scary. Somehow I managed to get my balls out of my thoughts and even swoon myself into a semi-conscious state, allowing time to pass a bit quicker.

When I regained consciousness, a homely-but-Korean nurse was kneeling down at my side, inserting into my arm what I hoped was a healthily regulated balloon of morphine. It was morphine, but not as much as I'd hoped for. My bed was scabbed over from five hours of anal bleeding, I could move my legs, almost feel my balls, and needed badly to fart. This however I would not do, fearing the pain, and sensing an apparantly scabbed over cork stopping up my ass hole. The nurse directed me to my sitz bath, a shallow toilet of hot-bubbling antibiotic water for cleaning out ruined anuses. After ten minutes of pleasant bubbling below, I lined my drawers with maxi-pads and went to bed.

The next day my rectum felt pretty good. I spent the day chatting with homely nurses about their perspective blind dates with handsome boys from my university. Intermittently I cleaned my wrecked rectum in sitz bath. Around ten at night I heard a loud thumping on the wall. I assumed it was someone's portable  i.v banging around. Then a loud moaning carried into my room. I opened the door to find a women of about age 60, collapsed on the bathroom floor, bleeding and crying for her mother. I shuffled to the nurses office, interrupting something between the nurse and one of her "just a friend," boyfriends. Apparantly this old woman managed to drag her numb and paralysed legs to the bathroom, even attempting to shit, before realizing that her entire lower body did not work, whereupon she plopped upon the floor forcing us to literally drag her back to her bed.    

While propping up the poor lady, a nurse noticed my i.v tube was clogged. The two nurses took me to the tape-up-the-patient-room and attempted to unclog my i.v tube by blowing into it orally. When that did not work they tried using the plastic plunger part of a syringe, which again did not work. I suggested a new tube and they laughed at me. Out came a needle. While one nurse was plunging, the other nurse was trying to shoot me up. The shoot-up nurse was unable to get a good vein. She slapped my wrist and inserted the needle, and as blood did not show up in the plunger, she dug the needle around inside my arm, pushing and pulling it about, looking for a strong source of blood. I asked her if she had ever used a needle before and she laughed at me. I laughed too. She thrust the needle, point first, at the other nurse and said "Take this."  I have noticed this about Koreans. They will carefully, gently hand over the most harmless glass of soju, using two hands. Replace this glass with a rusty blade or sharp razor and they will thrust the sharp end at you without hesitation, without so much as a directive glance. So the recieving nurse reached for the dirty dagger, as if it was a Q-tip, but the the thrusting nurse dropped the needle too soon and it fell, again point first, towards our sandalled feet. All of us managed to move in time, and I protested as one nurse cleaned the dropped needle and motioned towards my hand. I suggested a new needle and again they laughed. Again, I too laughed. I suspect I was laughing at them for the same reason they were laughing at me. We each thought the other stupid.

For some reason I allowed them to insert this bent and dirty syringe into my arm, and for some reason I am still here to tell the tale. I still have the balloon of morphine at my side, and my arm is alive, moveable and pink. No gangrene thus far. However, I am (once again) convinced that the best place to recieve Western medicine is the West. The next time I need homeopathic Chinese medicine I will recieve it here in Korea.   

Fatty