Now that we have been to Astana and traveled to Almaty, it is time to show how life is there. My love of markets is sacrosanct and I delight in the way they distinguish how people live across cultures. I will also show you the most beautiful place that I’ve ever been.
OK. Let’s continue the journey.
This the Green Bazaar. We’re back at the markets that I adore. Three massive floors of everything you can imagine. This is a stall for dried and preserved fruits. Here are the more Mediterranean influences on the culture.
Well, now we are back in Central Asia. Goat heads carefully displayed for your pleasure. The teeth weird me out.
This seems like a nice mix of cultures. The berries and spices, along with the various oils and tinctures color the scene. There’s something so exotic about strange potions in a flask. It reminds me of old-timey medicine bottles with their faded labels and antiquated language. I don’t know why those artifacts strike me so starkly. I love the typescript and aged paper. It makes me think of Jack the Ripper and Victorian England. Every color in every bottle entices me with the mystery of what they hold.
I don’t even want to know what each elixir is. I’m rather content to keep the wonder alive.
I wanted to show at least something of the city side of Almaty. This is the opera house. It looks like it could be out of St. Petersburg to these ignorant eyes. There was a show that night, and several hours after this snap it was marauded by hundreds of well-heeled patrons.
It was time to sleep. With a flight at 6pm the next day, I had half a mind to have a relaxed morn and stay in. I awoke and realized that rest can wait. I booked an overly-expensive cab and forged my way to Big Almaty Lake.
This fortitude turned out to be the best decision I made. In all of my life, and all of the numerous places I’ve experienced, I have never set sight on a place that was this stunningly majestic. I was literally without speech.
Deep in a valley, I was rewarded with this. I didn’t know that this color of aquamarine existed. The lake was unnervingly flat. From a distance you felt like you could stroll across it like Christ.
There’s that old yarn that the last thing you see gets burned to your retinas. If this were my last view I would have no regrets.
I always dip my feet in. The water was cold, yet soothing. The beautiful, clear skies entreated me to stay as long as possible. I got my hands dirty and felt the rocks. Numerous baby waterfalls cascaded and trickled into the lake. These were the Elysian Fields–mortals are not meant to witness such a place.
You even get a selfie from me. I’m very camera shy. This version of me (fatter than I am now, dammit!) has only one reason to be shared. In this shot I’m genuinely so shocked and moved by where I was that I couldn’t even pull a stupid face, the one that I always make against my will. The oxidized-copper hue of the lake, along with the surrounding mountains and scenery, were hypnotic. Look at all the tiny people near the edge of the lake for scale.
I flew back to Korea a few hours later.
Kazakhstan was a bit of a revelation. The food was incredible, everyone was universally nice, other than that asshole on the train. I got to see some things that I’d never seen before or since. I ate horse! I have some embarrassing stories that I didn’t share that are just for me, but that’s part of the flavor of a solo trip. You make mistakes and get lost (in more ways than one). More often than not you find yourself at a more interesting spot than the one you were looking for. The simple trick is to not mind and embrace the opportunity. Find beauty in everything you see. Wander down those scary streets.
Traveling alone to a new place is unnerving. There is no help and there are no lifelines. The experiences, knowledge, and wisdom you get from that type of travel are unparalleled. Trial by fire. Get busy livin’ or get busy dyin’.
My coworkers asked how my week of travel went. I don’t think that my face betrayed myself.
“It went ok.”
They needn’t know any more than that. This was for me. And for me to share. And I share it with you.
Last year, Korean Thanksgiving fell on a very fortuitous Wednesday. Where normally we would only get a 4-day weekend, the government blessed us with the whole week off. Nine days to explore.
I wanted to do something special. I looked at the map. Where can I go? Where haven’t I been? I remembered a good friend that lived there and it dawned on me. Central Asia. Kazakhstan. Fuck it.
My knowledge of the country consisted of two factoids: I knew it was a part of the USSR and that the Mongols used to make interesting architectural decisions when it came to their pyramid making there. Other than that–bupkis.
This was a solo trip as well, so you’re really stepping through the looking glass with adventures like these. It’s a delightfully odd sensation. You get the excitement of exploring something new, but you also have the fear and nervousness of everything that can go wrong. My instinctive desire to discover usually overpowers my natural state of constant anxiety.
Take off and land.
I arrived in Astana. It’s a very fake place, sadly. It was built from scratch to create a new capital after the fall of the Soviets. It’s surprisingly modern, but it lacks character and warmth. It’s an IKEA table, well-constructed with sharp, straight lines–but it’s missing the worn grooves, scars and character of an antique. I know which I prefer.
This is Astana. Yawn. There are lots of office parks like this. Places that look flashy but are mostly empty. The city has about a million people, but even the locals complained to me about its shallowness. It’s not a Chinese ghost town, but there is certainly more vacancy than demand.
Under advice from my friend who used to teach here, I only stayed in Astana for about 36 hours. It was fun. But again, very bland.
I did quite enjoy this Art Deco building. Reminds me of the Chicago Tribune building.
This is the Hazrat Sultan Mosque. It’s the biggest in Kazakhstan and the second largest in Central Asia. Architecture is a very interesting cultural thing–in my experience, the further away from yours they are is inversely related to how interesting you find them. My friends and I joke that if you see one temple, you’ve seen them all. Mosques are a bit more distinct. They still don’t approach my adoration of cathedrals, which I can pick apart detail by detail.
I rather liked this one, though. Most that I’ve seen have been old and weathered. The pristine white was an interesting change for me.
Ok, ladies and germs! This is where the real adventure begins. Look at the cute little face on the train! The star is his nose!
It was a 13-hour overnight journey down south to Almaty, the cultural capital of Kazakhstan. I soon discovered that this train was Soviet. As. Fuck. This was quite the adventure. It’s the embodiment of why I live the way that I do.
I sincerely apologize for the lack of a better shot–the train was rather jumpy. These are the central steppes. I kept imagining Mongol hordes tearing along the side of the train, just like I used to imagine Sonic jumping over obstacles to collect rings when I was a kid looking out the window on family trips. Kansas flat with a hint of foreboding.
Now, I must discuss the state of the train itself. I got a first class ticket, because I’m not an idiot. This entailed staying in a private room with double bunk beds. My roomies were pretty cool. Spoke enough English to casually chat and enough sense to leave each other alone for long stretches.
The rest of the passengers were parallel with the train, with three bunks above each other on both sides of the aisle. It was probably at 150% capacity, all cramped together and quite unnerving to this introvert. I would’ve had a panic attack if I had to stay here. It had undertones of a prison car.
Crossing between train cars was frighteningly surreal. You open the door and you are open to the air. There are weak chain guardrails that give you little reassurance. The boardwalk is shifting violently with every jolt and jar of the train. It’s blisteringly loud. Then you open the door to the next car.
There you are greeted with a furnace. It is totally open. You trip and you fall into it. I would advise against that. There is a coal pail on the floor to refuel. I feel obligated to remind my dear readers that this is located in a particularly jangly section of the train. You are climbing up a mountain–three points of contact at all times.
This is the bathroom. All hail the productive qualities of Soviet engineering! I think it’s very indicative of what the train was actually like. Let’s just say that I had some disturbing urinary experiences here.
Now I get to talk about this crazy fuck.
It’s pretty late. I go past all of those furnaces to get to the food and drink car. I bought some vodka and sat down with something to read. This guy starts talking to me. Uselessly. He doesn’t speak English and I can’t speak Kazakh or Russian. So we are Charlie Chaplin-ing our way through a conversation that I have absolutely no desire to have.
He ended up being an asshole and gesticulated my drink to the floor. I’m fed up, but I didn’t want this maniac following me to my bunk. I went into steerage to throw him off the scent. He tails me, incredibly drunk. Between the train cars, that crazy earthquake-land of rattle and danger, he grabs me. He’s physically threatening me–he wants my tablet. We struggle against each other. I am pinning his arms and trying to get leverage over him so he can’t take what is mine. This aggression escalated as I told him in no uncertain terms to go fuck himself.
I break loose and get to the next car. He follows. I start making a scene but he was mostly doing it for me. Passengers called for security. Men in green uniforms with red stars on their caps came in and broke it up. They told me to go back to my room.
I wanted to have another drink and calm down. So I went back to the beverage car, where the lovely clerk told me that that guy was trouble and that I got lucky. Then the guards came back in and berated me for not going back to my bunk as I was told. Being yelled at by men wearing Soviet uniforms is darkly chilling. An uneasy and bouncy sleep followed.
***
I arrived in Almaty. It’s a gorgeous city. This time, instead of focusing on the town itself or on my quirky little streets, I’m going to give you mountain folk what you crave the most.
This is Zailiyskiy Alatau. The pines were perfectly blanketed with snow. The sky was a blue that I don’t have a word for. It was a serene backdrop for the clouds, floating through peaks at 13,000 feet. This is more like basecamp. Now we need to go to the top. The cable car was out of service so I had to get a cab.
The clouds meandered through the valley–slowly swirling through as playful ghosts. Breathing in the clouds and exhaling my own. Always relish The Tingles. They are fickle and do not last.
I had a gorgeous and hilarious descent from the mountain. “GOOT!” the cabbie endlessly shouted at anything he thought was positive. Which was absolutely everything. It’s still a catchphrase that I use. It’s delightful having an inside joke with a friend, but it can be lovely to have one just for yourself. You seem more like a crazy person that way.
Back in town, it was time to see some Soviet monuments.
GOOT!
GOOT!
“Велика Россия, а отступать некуда. Позади Москва!”
“Russia is large but there’s nowhere to retreat. Moscow is behind us!”
These are from the ‘Park of the 28 Panfilov Guardsmen.’ Monuments celebrating soldiers from an Almaty infantry unit who died defending Moscow against Nazi attackers.
I am enthralled by Soviet art. It’s has a bold, cartoonish quality to it that perfectly matches my palette. The over-the-top themes of protective violence, the aggressive lines, wrought in iron–strike me the way Monet does others. It takes all kinds. As I look around my apartment, almost half of my decor is based on Soviet propaganda. Don’t hate the player, hate the game.
And that’s where I leave you for now. Stay tuned for Part 2! It will take you further into Almaty and my adventures there.
I went to Hanoi with my mother in early September. It was my fourth trip to Vietnam. I’ve worked my way up north–started off in Phu Quoc with the ex; spent 2015-2016 New Years with her in Saigon (it was cheaper than celebrating in Singapore); had an amazing time in Da Nang last year; and finally this. Vietnam is a very unusual place. One advantage of colonialism (for me!) is that the French Romanized the language. I’ll never get the tonal bits right but it’s fairly easy to at least kinda-sorta sound out signs and menus. The French influence is also very easy to see–with food and architecture–as you’ll see later. Some people call it (and Laos, etc) “Paris in the jungle.” The people are universally friendly and do not be fearful to be an American; The American War is in the past and people are more than happy to have us around. Wounds heal.
The swarm of scooters and spiderweb power lines swirl around every street. It’s oppressively hot and everything is out in the open. Life is more low key. Evenings are shared with the family open to the air. There aren’t many rules.
It was very difficult to whittle down these photos. I picked out 104 that I thought were worthy of my highlight reel. I’m limiting myself to ten for this post. I think that is excessive, but I just can’t help myself. It would be to cheat you. *I lied. Turns out be 13*
(Click to enlarge images in new tabs)
Hello, Hanoi! It has about 8 million people but much of the city consists of these little side streets. Full of food and many shops—expect bike mechanics and people sewing. Right off the sidewalk with shutters open.
Mopeds are everywhere. And yes, the hats are a real thing.
I picked this instead of the statue of Lenin that I took from the bus. It is only open for a few hours every morning and it never worked with our schedule to see the preserved body of the North Vietnamese leader. I’m OK with that. I’d be forced to be reverent to the embodiment of something I find evil. I still would have because transgression is fun, but it wasn’t to be.
This is the Hanoi Hilton. They have a guillotine and supposedly John McCain’s flight suit from when he was shot down. It was hard to pick a photo to represent this. The weird clay people with ankle shackles were very unnerving. Not sure I made the best choice. Fuck it.
Now Mom and I went to Ha Long. This was a cave within the mountains. Unbelievable formations and absolutely gorgeous.
Tons of fishermen and tourist boats sailing. Many come up to yours to sell bananas and other treats. The bigger boat was refueling the smaller right before this pic. They stopped to have a smoke and snack. The world goes slower here.
Boy falls in love with world. Craves more.
Hands down my favorite picture of the trip, and one of my favorites of all time. It was beautiful watching him absorb the atmosphere, just by himself. I imagine that I looked like that as a child. I try to feel like that as often as possible. There’s a big world out there, and I intend to experience as much of it as I can.
Ha Long Bay. It is very difficult to express how shockingly beautiful this place is.
The innumerous cliff daggers jut out from the ocean in divine randomness.
Just like that.
Dog in the market. My mother thought it was a baby pig. I decided not to tell her the truth. Markets in Asia are always a fascinating experience. You can buy bottles of blood and every intestine and bit of whatever animal du jour. As a former butcher, it’s good for people to see the process up close, with nothing wasted.
Here is some of that French influence. Based on Notre Dame. Gorgeous but also dirty. This layman blames the grime on the slash-and-burn farming popular in Southeast Asia. Buildings and Baguettes. Album name. Mine.
This little alley was mostly empty, but has many shopfronts and homes alike. There is a market on the tracks during the day. They move aside when the train comes through. I wanted to watch that but my mother was concerned about making our flight—I missed it by about 30 minutes. So it goes.
Same street. Every shop front is open and exposed to walk by. This how shit be, yo.
Sorry that I don’t have more city shots. It is indeed a very large place, but that’s not really my thing. Some people like mountains or the sea—I like quirky little streets. Back alleys and mischief. Everywhere I go I always visit a big local market. I love watching people buying and selling—and most importantly—just living. Seeing life for how it is and minimizing touristy stuff, although most things are touristy for a reason.
Most people fill their lives with spouses, children, or their work. I’m largely empty in those ways. I’ve filled my life with memories of the places and people that I’ve met across six continents. Sometimes that makes me sad, but mostly it just makes me want to explore some more and try to fill that hollow cup. There is more out there to discover.
I have argued for a long time that the War on Drugs is the most destructive domestic policy since slavery. When you look at the inordinate rates of incarceration, it is best viewed as a direct continuation of Jim Crow laws and their impact on minority subjugation.
While we all see the damage of the Drug War and the consequences inflicted on all involved, there are invisible and pernicious side effects that mostly go unnoticed. During my time in my hostel in Vietnam, I experienced something firsthand that often goes under the radar. The foreseeable consequences shoved down your throat.
The guy at the front desk at my place offered me some weed. After a long day in the heat showing my mother around Hanoi, I was more than happy to purchase. I get into my room, had several drinks and smoked a large joint in the bathroom.
I proceeded to chill, read and listen to music. And then the disturbance began.
My private room is at the end of the hall. I hear a man and a woman, both in their early 20s by the sound of it, start to argue. It sounded like the man had gotten her down from the rooftop bar to begin his tirade.
He is yelling at her. Something about her needing to “open [her] eyes” about something. It seemed very obvious that he was railing into her about how she could be so blind to not see how her boyfriend/significant other was cheating on her. I could be wrong about that, but that’s the gist that I got.
I heard violent sounds. He wasn’t hitting her, but was banging doors and hollow metal, probably an air-conditioner unit. He was violently punching his own hand as punctuation. I could hear when she spoke but not what she said.
I could only hear her sniffling and weeping.
I was very concerned. I got on the floor and listened through the crack below the door. I got a cup to put to my ear to hear, though of no real advancement in my acoustic surveillance. The beratement continued.
Amidst many slammed doors and stops-and-starts, a lull blanketed the hallway. I paused in introspection. My brain wants me to intervene. I’ve gotten one beating in my life and that was in Germany preventing a girl from being raped. Three men took turns kicking me in the face until I was unconscious. I was broken, but I’m very proud of that moment. I didn’t know if I’d have to do such a thing again.
It began again. But this time it was another voice doing the shouting. I gathered that it was the boyfriend who had been called out. More door slamming. More punching of metal. More violent fists in palms.
I decided to do something. I have two titanium hips and there’s a big concrete staircase. I can’t get directly involved, I figured. But maybe my appearance and a wary eye would keep people on their better behavior. I get dressed and put my shoes on.
As I went to open the door, a sickening wave fell over me. I smelled my room. I evaluated myself. I am half-drunk, very stoned, and my room reeks like Paul McCartney’s in 1966. I took my hand off the knob.
I thought about calling the lobby for help. But even then I realized that I would be a person-of-interest, and I certainly didn’t want to get in drug trouble in Commie Vietnam while on vacation with my mother.
I was disgusted with myself. I kept listening and monitoring the situation. But I didn’t dare step outside my enclave and approach a confrontation where it sounded like imminent violence was about to ensue.
I was too terrified to try to help this poor girl who was surrounded by at least two–drunk–large men who were doing everything that they could to intimidate her. Or possibly worse.
This is just one of the evil, unseen effects of the Drug War. See Something; Say Something, they preach. But how many crimes go unreported because the witness is afraid to talk to the authorities or to testify because of some bullshit drug charge is hanging over them? I wasn’t being threatened by some thug or a criminal syndicate. I felt threatened by what the government could do to me and how they could ruin my life. All because of a plant.
There isn’t much of a difference between the government and the Mafia. Punishment is punishment, regardless of who your jury is.
I am sickened by how I responded to these external forces. But I do know why I acted the way that I did. It doesn’t make me feel better. Rather the opposite.
People are handicapped by these immoral laws. They don’t report things that they know are wrong because they are trained to be fearful of the imminent reprisal. Is my getting beaten and sent to jail for smoking weed worth a girl getting thrashed around a bit?
It’s a deeply disturbing calculus that goes through your head when you attempt to rationalize your decision to do nothing.
A law on the books actively prevented me from helping a person in a very violent confrontation. That is the effect of these laws. I can only gather that this is how they want me to feel.
Helpless. Alone. Dependent.
And any attempt to do any good is struck down with the violent gavel of the God of Government.
That’s the problem. Good people afraid to do good things. Because the punishment that might follow isn’t worth the gamble.
I’ve had both of my hips replaced with titanium implants. My friends and I joke about being a cyborg and being part-Terminator. Laughter is indeed medicine. I had my right leg done in the States with private insurance and the left done in Korea, which has universal health care. This is my tale.
I was a few months away from being 25 when I first noticed a problem. I had been in the States visiting family and back flew to Korea to start my new contract. Literally the day that I arrived I started to feel a tinge of pain when I put weight on it. I assumed it was the stress of travel and schlepping all of my luggage around.
I used to run 3-5 miles a day and naturally assumed it was related to that. Everyone who runs is used to little tweaks and pains. My limp increased and I just dealt with it. People kept telling me to go to the hospital. I figured it would go away and rebuffed their advice. After six months of existential pain with every step, I figured it was time to see the doc.
It only took a simple X-Ray. The doc sat me down and showed me the film. My femoral head had a noticeable dark spot on it. He told me that I needed to have my hip replaced. With cool composure I asked about the details. Turns out that the blood vessels in my femur had closed off and the bone wasn’t getting oxygen. Necrosis, he said. The bone had literally died. The pain I felt was my body weight slowly crushing the bone into itself.
He says the left hip has the same problem but it’s not as advanced.
Outlook: not bright
Most people assume that I had been hit by a car when I tell them about my hips. I tell them the docs told me it was idiopathic. This may be true, but I think I have an idea. But that theory’s for me.
Cut and dry, it simply had to be replaced. It wouldn’t ever go away, and eventually would catastrophically shatter.
I got into a cab and tried to digest this. I called into work to get the day off. It also so happened that that was the day my parents were arriving to visit me. I fought off my emotions in the taxi. As soon I shut more apartment door I bawled my eyes out. I’ve never cried so hard. I collected myself and then collected my parents outside. It was pouring with rain, which felt fitting.
We went to Seoul with my ex that weekend. I walked with them for miles that day, unable to hide my limp that I hadn’t told them about. They wanted to see a palace. I bowed out saying that I was tired and had already seen it. Truth was the idea of walking over gravel for a few hours was too exhausting to think about. We later got pizza. While I was in the bathroom my parents asked the ex what was wrong. To her credit she didn’t say, per my wishes.
I flew back to the States to get the surgery done about a month later. I had three hour-plus one-on-one visits with the doc. He explained everything that was going to happen and what to expect. Being a young patient, he took a special interest in me. “This doesn’t happen to people as young as you,” he said. Not words you want to hear.
I had to go to group meetings to get prepared for the operation and what I need to do afterwards and what I won’t be able to do. After the surgery I wasn’t supposed to bend my hip past 90 degrees. It might dislocate, they said. I was easily 30 years younger than everyone else present.
Time for surgery. I was the first of the day and arrived early. I was given Valium and the nurses were very sweet. I was put under and don’t remember anything for the first 24 hours or so. I awoke in a spacious, private room. My bed was a lot of fun. I was pumped up with pain killers and felt incredibly stiff but no pain to speak of. I had a menu and could call at any time of day and get whatever food that I wanted. Having good food and calories were very important and comforting. This turned out to be very different than Korea.
Perhaps I should explain the surgery. First they had to sever three thigh/ass muscles. Then they dislocate your hip. Then they saw about 6 inches of it off. They shove the implant down through the bone marrow and pop the new head into one’s pelvis. Then they screw it in place through the bone.
Again, I don’t remember the first 24 hours. But I stayed at the hospital for three days and two nights. I don’t remember it being too unpleasant, other than how unpleasant being stuck in a hospital bed inherently is.
I was released home and was given a boatload of pain pills. I was encouraged to get out and about as soon as possible. The abject swelling and stiffness is hard to explain. But I dutifully would go out and walk 100 feet and back to the house. When going on stairs, the rule is: Good Leg up first; Bad Leg down first. Also—always use the cane on the opposite leg. Movies get that wrong so frequently. I notice it constantly now, just like I’ve always noticed when someone is left-handed.
I took my recovery very seriously. Eventually I got down to the end of the street. Then I went a block further. Soon enough I got to the nearby forest and tested myself walking over uneven trails. There was a real sense of accomplishment.
After a month the pain was still there but certainly manageable. The stretches I had to do were a terrifying new flavor of pain. It’s hard to explain. Your entire body is saying that this movement is absolutely unacceptable. It was a cold, desperate pain. It felt like something was going to rip. That tends to dampen your enthusiasm to your new regime. I probably didn’t do them enough. It’s still very difficult to get my right leg over my left knee into Newspaper-Reading stance.
I would say after six months my walking life was pretty much back to normal. No more running, though. No more jumping. They don’t know how long these will last on me because I’m not the average patient. But because I was young and fit they were encouraging. But they had no real answer. That I will almost definitely have to have another operation—one that I’m told is much, much worse– in x years is something that I try not to think about. It brings about feelings that I prefer to push out, given I have no control over them, I get sad when I make the mistake of dwelling on it.
I flew back to Korea. My life went about pretty normally for six months or so. My ex would help me with my grueling stretches. And then, in 2014, I started to feel the same pain in my left leg.
That was a fun day.
I decided to do the second surgery in Korea. My retired mother flew out to be with me. The surgeon spoke English but I only talked to him for maybe a minute at time. If I spent 5 minutes total talking to him I would be shocked. But I did have a Guardian Angel as a nurse.
And her name was….well I forget, sadly. She had studied in San Francisco and was my English aide throughout. She was the only competent person in the building. Every room had soap dispensers. She was literally the only one who used them. The only one. I’ll get back to that.
I paid extra for a private room, because I couldn’t handle that shit. Everyone else was in rooms with 6-8 patients. Cloth curtains, noxious smells and Korean food that even the locals didn’t eat. I was prepped for the op and I was wheeled down to the theater.
I got gassed and I went under.
I woke up sometime later, groggy and unfocused. They started to wheel me out. The anesthetic wore off shockingly fast. As soon as I was wheeled out into the expansive main floor of the hospital, all of the pain hit my acutely aware brain.
Torn muscles. Dislocated hip. Sawn off bone. Titanium thrust into my femur. Screwed back in.
I am screaming in the hospital. I’m talking taking-a-Minie-ball-to-the-leg-at-Antietam screaming. I couldn’t control it. Couldn’t hear myself. Couldn’t think. I was wheeled in front of patients, women, children….and my mother.
My mother had to hear her youngest scream like that. I’ve never talked to her about that moment and I never will. I can never forgive them for that. Never. Ever.
We got into the elevator. Again, my mother present. The echoes of pain must’ve been haunting in that steel box. I’m glad I don’t really remember it. We got to my room. Instead of picking me up by the sheet I’m on, they grabbed me limb-by-limb and flop me into the bed.
Then, and only then, did they inject me with more anesthetic. Let that incompetence sink it. Infuriates me to this day. Again, never, ever can I forgive.
That sadly, was only the beginning of my troubles. I had tons of drainage tubes attached to the bed. All in all I spent 10 days tied to that fucking bed. Shackled. They had people come a few times a day to turn me over and hit my back to prevent bedsores, which I eventually did develop, but thankfully they didn’t become a problem. Hilariously, those back-slappers were the only people that wore gloves, even when dealing with my stapled wounds and drainage tubes. I’ll come back to that, as well.
My mother was a saint. A Subway just opened up in Daejeon and it was really busy. I wanted actual food and she would wait in line for an hour to bring some comfort to her youngest. I liked getting her out of there. I didn’t like being so helpless and needing everything done for me. My friends wanted to visit and I told them no. I would visit them when I got out. I didn’t want to be seen like that.
My humanity was spiraling.
One thing made me happy. I would trudge along until 6pm. That was always the goal. Deal with the shit and you can make it to six. That’s when the Korean baseball games would come on. I don’t care about the teams here—I’d flip through channels 44-48 trying to find the best game. Whatever game was the most interesting, I would watch. For those 4 hours I knew I could kind of escape myself. And at 10:00 or 10:30 when the games ended, I had to deal with reality again. Cold, painful, lonely nights.
I didn’t take a shit for 6 days. They started to get nervous and would give me laxatives every meal. Still, nothing. Sometimes I would think that I had a shipment to deliver and I’d get the bedpan. My mother would leave and I would painfully struggle to pick myself up enough to get it under me. Usually I had Top Gear on to distract me from the desperation. I had two days of false alarms. When I finally did take a shit it was hands-down the foulest thing my body has ever produced. Had the consistency of daub. The Mississippi Indians could’ve built a duplex with that load.
I had to give that vitriolically foul deposit to my mother to deal with. Again, a Saint.
A week after the op came Sunday, Bloody Sunday.
Everyday I was wheeled out into the lobby to get my bandages dressed. But on this Day of the Lord, the doctors were off. Interns and graduate students only. They were going to remove my drainage tube. I was on my side, lying away from the two kids taking it out. I felt a pinch. They had just got back from their smoke break. Reeking of Marlboro, they fiddled around this inch-long incision in my lower ass. They were not wearing gloves.
Then, all of a sudden, a lovely surprise. It turns out that that pinch I felt had nicked an artery. So there I am, lying on a hospital bed, in relative public, with blood spurting out of my ass with every heartbeat.
I actually had some fun with this one. It didn’t hurt and I wasn’t really concerned. They called the doc and were frantically asking what to do. They applied pressure. Again. Their bare hands smoke-infused. Pressure was applied for about 5 minutes. They pulled away and breathed a sigh.
To my great pleasure, the spurting returned!
I was legitimately laughing at this point in time. This felt like a bit of my revenge. I wasn’t in pain and I was gleefully inconveniencing others for a change. Their white coats were splattered with blood. Felt like justice. More pressure was applied. Eventually the bleeding stopped. I’m glad my mom wasn’t there for that one. She wouldn’t have approved of my Grinch-like grin.
After ten days of being locked to the bed (I was still attached when they wheeled me out to get new bandages), they finally let me out and into a wheelchair. To be able to read in the sun was a revelation. I got some upper body exercise speed-wheeling myself around the hospital. And I hatched a plan. I got a hold of some crutches. “Don’t walk” they said. Well, this wasn’t my first rodeo and I knew what I could handle. At night I would get down to the main entrance and crutch-walk my way out. This was a great time to pull the Foreigner Card. No one ever said anything to me.
I went across the street to the 7-11, bought smokes and booze. Smoked a celebratory cig worthy of The Great Escape and went back in. I got loaded in my room and had fun for the first time in a very long while. I repeated this every night for the next four days. The satisfaction I got by taking back my agency was worth everything. Also, I had been dramatically weaned off the pain killers by this point in time. I felt like I was keeping up the tradition of getting drunk before/after battlefront surgery. Shit works, yo.
After a total of two weeks I was allowed to leave that infernal place.
My surgery in America came on insurance and cost $80,000. With our fantastic insurance (granted my mom was a teacher with a very strong union), our family was charged $674. I was in the hospital for 3 days and was pampered and taken care of. I was given dignity. I was given the tools I needed to recuperate on my own afterwards.
In Korea the surgery cost me $6000. No idea what it actually cost to do. I was chained to a bed, humiliated, traumatized, was treated by monstrously inept staff (save, of course, for my Guardian Angel), and was given no pain killers to help with my recovery once I left the hospital. It was absolutely the worst fourteen days of my life.
Now, to compare the two systems in terms of policy. The actual price tag in the States would legitimately be out-of-reach for the vast majority of people. Insurance mitigated that, however. I actually benefited from Obamacare by still being on my parents’ insurance. That’s why I did it there to begin with. My mom still doesn’t understand how I can be opposed to a program that actively helped me. Because it’s my mother, and she’s a Saint, I don’t follow up with an answer.
In Korea, $6000 is attainable for most people, even if they have to take out a loan. The quality was absolutely atrocious, and it was very easy to see how they cut on the amenities in order to focus costs on actual medicine. That’s probably a good idea with their budget, but I learned that a lot of healing and getting better is being comfortable. Having good food, being in a clean place, not being in pain, having helpful nurses and staff, fundamentally helps you recover. It relieves your stress, the stress of your family, and the stress you feel from forcing your family to feel that stress to begin with.
I’m not going to make a policy argument of the pitfalls and perks of these two systems. The purpose of this piece isn’t really for myself to get into the politics of everything. My point was to show what the same serious operation is like in one system versus another. They both have their pros and cons and I benefited from both of them in my own way. I’ll be plain and say that the best solution would be to have an actual market, which we all know doesn’t exist when it comes to health care. If you can afford the filet mignon and lobster, go for it if that’s what you’re in the mood for. If a buck McDouble is going to sate you, then that should be available for you as well. You should always have the option to choose.
***** For what it’s worth, the second surgery was in 2014 and I felt back to relative-normal six months later. I have been walking pain-free ever since, after having dealt with existential pain every step for over three years. I sometimes catch myself getting bitter about the things I can no longer do and what I’m facing in the future. But then I try to focus on how lovely it is not to deal with that pain anymore, and how modern technology saved me from an affliction that certainly would’ve left me direly crippled or dead a hundred years ago.
Here’s to hoping further innovation and a bit of luck can help me keep walking for decades to come. Please, Washington, don’t get in the way.
Then, and only then, did they inject me with more anesthetic. Let that incompetence sink it. Infuriates me to this day. Again, never, ever can I forgive.