The Worst Thing I've Ever Had In My Mouth

This second week of my vacation has been an unenjoyable one. I went to the hospital on monday (which I already wrote about I believe). Well, on thursday I was back at the hospital. Same stomach issues. Same pain. This time the doctor and nurses yelled at me. They were yelling at me for not going to the outpatient clinic during the day, but they told me to go there if my pain was still there the next day, and it wasn't.

Anyway, I called my doc the next day. He told me to come in saturday morning. So my friday was spent just kind of nursing my tender stomach. By the way, I don't like these feelings at all.

On saturday morning Victoria went with me to the hospital. She's my Korean mother. I'm very thankful that she was there. At the hospital I had a chest x-ray, an EKG, sedation, and an endoscopic stomach exam. My blood pressure and x-ray and EKG were all good, no problems (for those of you who doubt it's existence, the x-ray showed that I infact DO have a heart).

Now, the endoscopic exam. First off, the doctor asked me which test I would like to have. My choices were to swallow some dye and take an x-ray or do the endoscope. He wouldn't make a recommendation. This is the Korean style. So I had to ask which is the better test. Both sound unpleasant, so which one will give me the most bang for my buck so to say. Anyway, I'm fairly certain that I did not get enough sedation drugs. I never fell asleep after the test. I felt the whole test. Drooled a lot. The endoscope was making me belch during the test. It was horrible.

So what's wrong with me you might be asking yourself. Well, I don't have an ulcer, which is good. I have gastritis, which is an inflamation and irritation of the stomach lining. This is caused by too much stomach acid. What's causing this though? Well, it could be stress (but I'm on vacation, how stressed can I be?), it could be food related (but it never happens when I eat spicy food), or the timing of my eating. I don't know. But, the doctor gave me a week's worth of medication. I will return to see him friday for a check-up. I will apparently be taking some kind of ant-acid for quite a while. Ah, Korea. By the way, this whole incident cost me only $50.