Postscript: Five Years Later: The Final Cut
Posted by Andrew | Filed under Cancer Diary, Commentary, General, Health, Humour, Living in Korea, Uncategorized
One of the involvements that I have been having recently, as part of a burgeoning interest in Stoicism as a philosophy of life, is of writing my reflections upon a question or proposition twice a day; the practice of Stoic (reflective) journalling. Twice a day, I record my responses to philosophical cues from Ryan Holiday’s “Daily Stoic Journal”, although not without gaps at present.
Philosophy, however, represents a reflective space, which can be highly personal, where the strands of one’s life can converge with new ideas, and in which new ideas can be introduced; and in this environment, the worth of those ideas can be compared. This is where the Journal comes in.
Here, finally, then, with something of a Stoic background, I am thinking about the post-experiential recollection and response to a health issue long after the event, essentially bringing my cancer narrative to a close. When they give you the Bad News, how should one respond? Is cancer cause for humour?
Tumour humour, much?
After some five years of completing the post-operative monitoring and being essentially cleared of cancer last December (with the obligatory you-know-what stuffed up my posterior), I recently found myself considering an odd question, late at night (well, I was lying in bed at the time, what a surprise!): after all, the cancer was not, and could not be, the only bad or stressful experience that I would face in my life. Also, I had recently passed the age of sixty, and despite the fact that since that time, I had been put on some half a dozen drugs for my blood pressure, biologically, at least, I seemed to be sound and stable – or, at least, as “sound and stable” as one might be, taking half a dozen drugs a day… it sounds worse than it really is. Really.
However, this led me to ask myself the question: years later, when a life-threatening condition would be in the increasingly remote past, how should I look back and react to it? An analogy might be with the kind of “gallows humour” one encounters among people who have dangerous occupations; some levity, however odd, relieves at least a little of the immediate stress.
Obviously, when I was first told that I had bowel cancer, considered to be a high risk, I was not exactly overjoyed: I had had a sudden, intense existential threat thrust into my face, and perhaps I need not suggest here how great the shock factor might be. The days immediately thereafter, when everyone around me was getting on with his or her own life basically as normal, seemed somewhat surreal. In much the same way that young people talk about death as a strange and remote thing, I had always thought of cancer as something that was unlikely to happen to me, yet here it was. Be warned, people: cancer strikes fifty per cent. of us before we finally kick the jolly old bucket. It could be you… actually, it probably will be.
Now… as I have become increasingly involved with considerations of Stoic philosophy recently, this suddenly came to the forefront of my thinking, as it seems to parallel the notion that emotional reactions to external stimuli are not necessarily appropriate, if only because most things in life are deemed by many mature people as not being worthy of comment. It is, to be honest, hard to not recall these things sometimes, as the human mind has a habit of recycling ideas and experiences, but there are definite benefits, as this helps to guard against forgetfulness. We should, however, remember this golden rule: not everything you see in life is worthy of comment. Learn, instead, to laugh inside with maybe a wry smile to yourself. Laughter will always take away some of your own stress. Don’t try to share it with or explain it to others, as they will probably take it in the wrong sense, and you may even find yourself ostracised as a result. People are funny like that; there are too many strange (or otherwise bizarrely self-indulgent and narcissistic) people in society.
Stress itself is a known cause (or contributory factor) of cancer, and we can hardly suggest that daily life is lacking in stressful elements – if you are foolish enough to have the TV on for any length of time, the news media (which you actually pay for, back in the UK), is non-stop stressful propaganda. I sometimes feel that people could get cancer just from too much time spent immobile watching the goggle box. No kidding! The bullshit is both constant and unbearable; the most sensible thing to do is turn it off. Hence, very often here in Korea, as I try to get new apartments of the unfurnished variety and do not have a television of my own, I will simply get the Internet hooked up and not worry about it. I will choose what pabulum my mind should receive, thank you very much. Some unfurnished apartments, like the current one, may come with a TV, but I basically ignore it.
TV needs to be avoided because it is populated by a strange caste of narcissists, and these are also a group who should be excluded from your life, as their presence is a great source of stress. Especially if one of these is someone you actually admire, ask yourself whether what they do presents a realistic or even acceptable example of social behaviour. Also, does their behaviour or attitude represent a benefit to wider society? Probably not. Sadly, our civilisation has begun on its downward slope and we are about to witness a huge decline and fall. The narcissists are a parasitic class who produce little of value (but typically value themselves and their opinions rather highly, so go figure), but slowly burden society down until it is unable to rise again, like ticks infesting an old pasture horse until it suddenly drops dead. Turn off the TV and keep them out of your living room. Their dubious doings are no concern of yours.
When it comes to philosophy, Stoicism is too often regarded as encouraging an attitude of detachment and possibly even emotionlessness in the face of what many would call suffering or misfortune, but in reality, the original Stoics were people who rejoiced in life; despite the bad experiences that they encountered, the Stoics asked themselves what they were (or should be) grateful for; was life completely bad, or did they still have things which were good, which they should remember even as the misfortune was perhaps upon them? The popular perception of Stoicism is incorrect, and is the result of ignorance.
When we remember the origins of Stoicism with the death of Socrates, the reactions of his admirers and followers and, indeed, the passage of Stoic philosophy through generations of thinkers such as Marcus Aurelius, we need to remember that the backdrop to their experience of daily life, of what it meant to be human, was in a world very different from the world we know today. There was undeniably a greater opportunity for suffering in a society with not only slavery and plebeian poverty but also a culture in which punishment was often almost synonymous with entertainment; also, reading Suetonius’ account of the lives of the Caesars makes it very clear that being in a position of privilege or wealth in ancient Rome was no real defence against either persecution or sudden death.
Life in those days required a certain amount of fortitude simply to exist and survive in a world where death could come at any moment, whether at the hands of an interlocutor with ill intent or due to the relatively primitive state of medicine; as history shows, even the emperors of Rome were not immune, as even their own bodyguards could turn on them at a moment’s notice. Ancient societies necessarily persisted at the point of the sword, infant mortality was high and they did not have the advantage of such things as antibiotics in the event of diseases. Since life could be snatched away in an instant, people needed not only to live in the moment, but also to reflect upon whether they were actually making good use of their time and having good plans for an uncertain future. When a Stoic spoke about “gratitude”, you can be sure that at least part of what they were grateful for was the simple joy of being able to wake up the next morning to experience another additional day of being alive. Ironically, the main threat to the original Stoics was that they were misperceived as seditious malcontents, when in fact they were more concerned with how a good life could be lived.
As the ultimate origin of what we now call “Stoicism” was with Socrates, let’s not forget what was probably his most important assertion: that an unexamined life was not worth living. When we are confronted with the Bad News, perhaps, in a Socratic vein, we should be asking ourselves what kind of lessons we will have learned in its aftermath, when we have the opportunity of a post-experiential examination of what happened, and how it should inform our thinking in the future. Socrates would probably berate us as contemptible fools, destined to live our lives in suffering and ignorance, if we took little or no time to consider the lessons that the experience had brought us.
In a developed modern society, surrounded by the products of advanced technology and medicine, it is perhaps too easy to fall into the illusion of a kind of virtual immortality; indeed, so many of us seem to live as if we think death will never come. The ancient Romans knew this, and their watchword was “memento mori”: “remember that you must die”. We are all mortal and irrespective of our individual desires or intentions, death is something that we must all face in the end. In such circumstances, there is at the same time not only irony in laughing at past misfortunes, but also optimism in the realisation that we were strong enough to endure them. Paradoxically, perhaps, the experience also gives us strength and hope when other misfortunes strike – experience which we can share with others when they are likewise affected. It was hard when the crisis was upon us, but the outcome was that we discovered what strength we could summon up from deep within ourselves when we needed it most. What we discovered was, in fact, that we had more strength than we ever imagined; strength such as is difficult to explain to others. The medicine and science are great and all, but without an appropriate Socratic self-examination after the fact, perhaps, nothing would have been learned.
It is not without reason that we speak of “cancer survivors”, even with the benefits of modern medical technology, but unfortunately, we cannot avoid the inevitable. In the twenty-one years since I left the UK, the older members of my extended family have also been passing to the great beyond, something that I could not fail to notice; medicine can only take us so far before biology strikes. They did not all die of cancer, but due to a range of the afflictions of old age. We must learn to see these things as signals from the future; yes, the passing of our friends and family is always deeply saddening, but in the face of that which cannot be avoided, perhaps we should be celebrating the achievements by which they will be remembered. The mourning itself passes eventually, and they live on in the memories of those who survive them. However, we all go the same way, in the end. Memento mori.
At the time, when my own cancer was diagnosed, I had no idea what would happen in the period of days leading up to the operation, or indeed whether the actual end was looming. I shared a very small ward space with six other male patients who were at different stages of progression. As smoking is still very prevalent in Korea, there was no doubt in my mind that this was responsible for the condition in at least some of my temporary cohabitees, and with some of them, the progression was clearly advanced and it was affecting their minds. Outside, the weather was cold, as it was now early January, and as I was waiting to have my operation, I would watch the snow falling past the ward window, which was a strange contrast with the surprisingly high temperature that was maintained indoors, and which kept me constantly sweaty. [1] Of course, a single room was possible, but I was told that the cost was some KRW450,000 a night, so that decision was kind of already made for me… the others would simply have to put up with my snoring…
One might also comment that there is an element of fatalism in abandoning oneself to whatever is to come, yet assenting to an operation is not a guarantee of survival. We place our trust in the surgeon, but there is no absolute certainty of returning alive from anaesthesia; some abandonment and casting oneself upon the seas of fate is a requirement in such circumstances, not a choice. As it happens, the operation proceeded as planned and I was transported back to my bed with a load of catheters and cannulae inserted at various points (not to mention the Fecal Diversion Device itself), which rather hampered both easy movement and routine hygiene; but I persisted. It seemed the right thing to do at the time…
Over five years after the event, I find myself often reflecting upon that brief encounter with mortality with varying amounts of humour, sometimes rather dark, maybe still maintaining the typical human delusion in my mind of immortality, even as the reality creeps ever closer, considering that I have now reached the age of sixty. However, it is because I made a choice that I am able to sit here, typing this on my tablet; and because I made that choice, and did not succumb to a kind of paralytic indecision at a moment when mortality beckoned, I am free to continue my life as I wish, at least, for as long as it lasts. Perhaps this is, in fact, the most important take-away from the experience: it’s not the odd humour itself but the surviving and being able to indulge in the humour, because without the former, the latter is impossible. Socrates was right; you learned something there.
What, then, can I offer by way of advice to anyone who has such a circumstance thrust upon them?
Firstly, let me express due gratitude to Professor Kim Jae-hwang, the surgeon, his team, and the ladies and gentlemen on the ward, who all put up with an odd foreigner with grace and dignity. Secondly, let me express my gratitude to my ex-manager at Times Media, Jamie, who did not hesitate to get me to an initial specialist’s examination when the symptoms became severe. Let me, thirdly, express my gratitude to another lady who stepped in to countersign the necessary forms when another had promised to do so, but did not turn up as agreed. I need not mention her name here, but her signature was probably the most vital component in all of this.
My final advice might be something like this: survival is manifested as a consequence of many things, many factors, perhaps many choices, but when mortality calls, you must make the decision, and don’t be afraid. If the price of your indecision is death, it is still a choice that you must make; as we saw above, greater minds than yours have been taxed by similar situations in times past, and did not waste time on it. They were no more welcoming of the inevitable than you, but understood that they were free to choose; and what followed from their choices became history. Moral (perhaps): make the right choice, and maybe you won’t be history…
… you want to be able to look back, many years later, and laugh; recalling that time when death came to call, and was denied…
… and be grateful.
References:
[1] In fact, I had to collect my urine each time I went to relive myself, as they were monitoring this output. The trouble, of course, was that I was sweating so much that this would distort any figures that they were calculating.
The End of Cash… Maybe…
Posted by Andrew | Filed under A Farewell to Authority, Breakfast in the Ruins, Commentary, General, Gripes, Health, Living in Korea
Sitting here in what might laughingly be called a “living room” on a Saturday morning after a painful and traumatic week, when everything seemed to go wrong… but as I was practising some bodily manoeuvres this morning for the alleviation of leg pain, something interesting suddenly dawned on me…
Last Wednesday, I started to have trouble with what now appears to be a sciatica-related condition (I spent this morning digging up videos about this and applying the knowledge, and surprisingly, so far at least, I have not yet felt the need to reach for the analgesic and muscle relaxant pills I was prescribed this Monday). By Friday night last week it had become excruciating, but as it could hardly be described as “life-threatening”, I decided to wait until Monday morning before trying to hit the San Carollo Hospital and see if a consultant could enlighten me.
As it happened, by that time it had proven possible to mitigate the pain, but this basically meant staying in bed, and even then I would still get painful sessions. Clearly, something had to be done, because I had to be back in work on Tuesday. However, it represented an opportunity to re-acquaint myself with my collection of Elric novels, which my sister had sent to me from England previously…
The trouble was that I had already had a minor disaster in the form of the expiration of my debit card. Calling (eventually) Nonghyup representatives and also hitting a local small branch of the bank a couple of times, I discovered that, firstly, I could not have the card reissued until I started a new E2 visa renewal (!) and secondly, the local branch could not even issue a new ATM card because they were only a small local franchise office; therefore, I had to basically travel halfway across Suncheon, by taxi, of course (because there is no direct bus route there), on a late Friday morning, to the branch where my replacement debit card (replacing the one that I lost shortly after arriving here) had been supplied earlier last year. Obviously, they had no problem at that point because I had just signed a new contract and extended my visa. However, I had also to be in work by about 1:30 that afternoon, at the latest, and what a surprise, there were only two clerks behind the counter (complete with those unnecessary plastic screens due to an unscientific, superstitious and factually unprovable concept of disease transmission), and progress was painfully slow. I think I had to wait almost an hour before more clerks came back to their desks, and then things changed; but there was a preponderance of older customers who needed to undertake certain financial tasks and they all seemed to be taking forever; one elderly female customer, at the desk right in front of me, kept jumping up and down all the time, for no apparent reason, and I swear that everyone else there was feeling the same; impatient. I took a ticket and sat there waiting, and there were eleven other customers waiting before me…
Thankfully, everything was smoothed out rapidly: first a new ATM card was issued, then I got my Nonghyup phone app reactivated (because a damaged battery forced me to get a new phone recently, which turned out to be a whole other story on its own), and finally, halleluyah! – I was able to get a new bank book… why? Well, it turns out that when Times Media took me back in 2019, they asked me for my current bank book to get my account details… and I never saw it again. As a result, for the last four years, I have been conducting all of my finances through a set of ATMs, never needing the clerks at all; at the same time, in transiting between various locations, it also looks like I lost my old ATM card as well!
A stressful and painful morning, to be sure, but I got all of the results that were possible, if not actually desirable. I will discuss what I think will be the ultimate sequelae of this briefly later, but for now, let me add that as the new academic year approaches, my manager has been rearranging students between classes according to language level, and it has been chaos. While all of this has been happening, I have been in agony, as repetitive strains have exacerbated my condition; even the powerful analgesic prescribed for me by Doctor Choi at San Carollo, plus his prescribed muscle relaxant, could not alleviate the pain completely, but at least it was not as bad as the previous Friday.
However, this succession of misfortunes has made me recognise something: there is a lot of talk these days about how banks and governments want to transition to all-electronic finances in order to avoid the need for physical money (and thereby, also, conveniently control people in a way that cannot be resisted). I have seen several flaws in this here in Korea, the first being that when I was living in Daegu and using a travel card before receiving my first Nonghyup Bazik debit card; it didn’t seem to be possible, at the subway station, to reload the travel card electronically, but the machine had to be fed cash, and this meant, of course, paper money… which was strange because I had had a number of these RFID devices for some years and never had any problem paying for them at, say, a local convenience store using the Bazik card; no problem.
Now, a second idea has struck me: how will a universal, purely electronic system be possible when banks have rules which prevent the issuance of the cards necessary to use that system? Admittedly, my case is different because I am not a Korean national, and the process is therefore affected by the need for a sufficiently long visa, but does this not start to take on the appearance of an unexpected showstopper? Will this result in prosecutions, as customers will easily be able to demonstrate that the refusal to issue is unreasonable? Personally, I do not think that the idea of having a glass-coated RFID device subcutaneously is a particularly good idea (although some people, particularly in places like Sweden, seem to like the concept of having the Mark of the Beast on their bodies; I think these people are more lefty mind-slave types), and the practicalities of such systems (in terms of there being a necessary minimum transaction size for any payment to be practical) seem to suggest to me that either the system cannot be one hundred per cent. penetrant, or alternatively, that certain types of transactions will become impossible (due to a lower limit on transaction size imposed by overall cost) and will actually disappear because notes and small change will no longer be available for them… or perhaps this is actually what “somebody” wants?
The Return to Writing
Posted by Andrew | Filed under Art, Breakfast in the Ruins, Commentary, General, Living in Korea, Lost Geographies, Odds and Ends..., Uncategorized
For some time, it has been apparent to me that I need to return to writing. By this, I mean not embarking on some unfinishable science fiction novel, but more the reflective type of stuff which I used to post on a weekly basis on my old blog, say ten years ago, before I went north to work in Gyyeonggi for a year (and which, like so many jobs here, led absolutely nowhere).
I would grind away at my job until the weekend, and on the Saturday or Sunday, take a bus down to Nopo (when I was living in Yangsan) and/or the subway to Haeundae, and descend upon the Wolfhound to have a meal, and then sit alone with a glass of dry cider, physically writing in my old B5 note folder. Especially when the weather was inclement or the customers already there were few and far between, it was a good time and place for contemplation, and let’s face it, ‘contemplation’ is something you start to do more and more as you get older and your life experience increases. The Wolfhound was a great place for this, for which I am grateful; it was generally quiet before the multitude descended upon it, and people mainly left me alone to think and write.
Interestingly, I could do the same at the Wolfhound in Itaewon while I was working for the KDLI in Icheon; alas, however, Itaewon has also changed, including the loss of another regular watering-hole there, the Seoul Pub. It would be nice to revisit a few places there some time; I have experienced so many ‘lost geographies’ since I first arrived in Korea.
It would have to be said also that there is an aesthetic quality in the physical act of writing, on paper with your favourite pen, to be able to take the time required in a comfortable place, which is somehow lacking when using modern media, as I am doing now, writing this. Of course, publication would eventually be on a web site, so we are not talking about abandoning technology – after all, one of the great benefits of having a computer is that the intermediate steps of editing and revision are so much easier and faster, and besides, how else would you finally upload and finalise it? If there is WiFi available, you could do this (with difficulty, perhaps) using the likes of a tablet, but the natural spatial and temporal separation between the writing location and the editing/uploading location was helpful in itself, as the time for reflection upon what was written was thereby extended, and additional ideas could be incorporated into the whole before finishing. In any case, there was no pressure with regards to time because what I was writing was (mostly) personal.
Fast forward some ten years (as I transitioned temporarily back to the elementary school in Yangsan following a year at YBM in Seomyeon, and then off for a year in Gyyeonggi), and I had already had to transition to a private blog (on server space in Singapore, no less) because Opera, the browser company, had decided to dispose of their social media and I already had to move years of blogs and pictures between servers. I had settled on using WordPress as a publishing platform after the loss of Opera’s own, and that has also had little ‘issues’ caused by the kind of ‘improvements’ that one might expect more from the likes of the GNOME desktop… and the aesthetic and emotional need for physical writing, on paper and using a pen rather than my more customary keyboard, has reared its head again.
Predictably, this was where the problems started. Last time, I had my favourite (and factually rather cheap) three-hole B5 folder which doubled as my schedule planner for the daily lessons, something which I still do. However, it has proven surprisingly difficult to find a similar three-hole B5 folder with pleasing aesthetic qualities, and so, this afternoon (a Sunday, of course), I lashed out on a new, black one… but this time, the paper has nine holes. Again, neither difficult nor expensive to procure, but annoying, since (as far as I am aware) I will only be able to order such things online for the foreseeable future. Despite the cost, it did seem to me that the aesthetic and emotional aspects justified the expenditure; last time, I never thought about the costs involved, which were cheap, but that was because I was co-opting materials which had an existing use, which mitigated them. Plus, as suggested above, although much of this process might be possible on (say) my latest tablet, it could in fact be more difficult than simply writing it out in the first place.
Another odd consideration is the actual writing implement itself. Way back when I had to wear a two-piece uniform with a shirt and tie five days a week, and school gravy was a penny a slice, I developed a passion for ink pens, meaning, of course, fountain and cartridge pens; at one point I had a small collection of red Shaeffer No Nonsense pens, as all of these things (including refills) could be purchased locally at a reasonable price. Later, I changed over to fibre pens, which seemed to glide nicely over the paper, although in both cases I was writing so much that I wore the nibs down quite rapidly. More recently, I have changed back to ball pens, although I note that the “Rolly” type with 1mm balls no longer seem to be available; everything else now seems rather ‘scratchy’, which I think has a lot to do with the state of my finger joints these days… maybe I should go back to Shaeffer?
However, what I am really talking about here is a transition to journalling, rather than straightforward ‘blogging’. This practice is wonderful for a number of reasons, not least because it allows the writer to organise both thoughts and actions, gives him or her time to think and perhaps even get out of an otherwise claustrophobic Korean apartment and even meet people. Well, who would’a thunk? I was surprised to discover that this particular area is huge on the Internet, although the kind of dedicated materials (i.e. writing notebooks) often on sale are rather smaller (A5 or less) than I would prefer, largely because I have always found that physical writing becomes cramped on small pages, and of course, crossing-out, rearrangement and other general editing is so much easier on a bigger page, although a page size as large as A4 might be somewhat intimidating, so B5 represents a kind of ‘happy medium’ for me, personally.
The use of the term ‘journalling’ however, implies a sense of privacy rather than preparation for publication, which may not be a bad idea. Previous experience showed that the relaxation factor plus the time factor were helpful in improving both the quality and the content, although space for mind maps, schemata and concept diagrams on the physical page might also be valuable; and the very fact that I am considering these things now shows that I have acquired new and useful ideas in the course of the intervening ten years, especially ideas which came from my time as a TESOL trainer.
We might ask whether there will be any change in topic areas, and my answer might be ‘no, but there will be greater depth of consideration’, especially with regard to historical and computing-related topics, and also new ideas which I have been considering for the future, which would involve other technologies which I expect to interface well with those where I already have experience. Clearly, it is a major error to rush a piece of writing through without sufficient consideration and research; also, we should perhaps consider that things which (in the past) might result in a Saturday night rant are really things which either deserve no emotional or physical reaction, or if they do, perhaps a sideways glance, a wry smile and some verbal rolling of the eyes. Not everything in life deserves a response. Seriously.
With regard to the computing side of things, I note that we are actually coming up to version 9 of Mageia Linux very soon, which I transitioned to (again) literally ten years ago, when Mandriva dismissed a whole load of their devs, who, in a huff, got together and created Mageia 1 by forking Mandriva, and the transition was completely trouble-free. Linux has turned out to be much more productive, not to mention less hassle, than the Windows environment, and has a host of free apps which have proven great for my workflow.
Another odd development was that over the last few years, but especially during the more recent times of Covid idiocy, I made inroads into screenshot videos, both on Mageia and even on Win 10 (although I had to spend money to do the latter). Most of these were intended for my students when I was working for Times Media, but I did make a few others which can be seen in various places. I now have equipment for virtually every possible kind of media, so there may be a lot to learn there, too, as I ended up with some cheap voice recording equipment.
All of which means that I will be out for an exercise walk later tonight (after doing a bit more cleaning) and pay for the purchases at the local ATM (as phone-based payments are temporarily in need of being transferred to my new phone); the new materials should then be here later in the week. Thereafter, I will be looking for suitable places for scribbling on a Saturday or Sunday (because somehow, the Starbucks across the main drag there seems too easy a target), which will undoubtedly be a good thing, as this particular area could hardly be described as ‘interesting’.
Who knows, with a little contemplation and focus, maybe my weekends will be more productive in the future?
When the Haemo-Globbin Comes Throb-Throb-Throbbin’ Along…
Posted by Andrew | Filed under A Farewell to Authority, Cancer Diary, Commentary, General, Gripes, Humour, Living in Korea, Uncategorized
With immaculate timing the current Coronavirus panic set in just as I was due to have another colonoscopy. Predictably, things did not proceed as planned…
It had been expected to just happen as normal: first the purge, then the laying prone on the gurney, unconscious, while the medics did the dirty work; usually a short and painless procedure, but alas, it was not to be! First I screwed up with the purgative, and then, on the day, my blood pressure was too high. Again. And again. The nurse in charge decided that the colonoscopy could not proceed because of the danger of accidental bleeding resulting from any internal injury during the procedure and decided that it had to be postponed (!) until my blood pressure had been stabilised at a more “normal” reading, and I ended up discussing it with a cardiologist, who put me on Norvasc (calcium channel inhibitor) for fourteen days and gave me a little book to write my daily readings in. Readings that I would take with my little Panasonic BP meter that I bought back in 2008 and appears to still be going strong. Alas!
Now, when it comes to the reading of blood pressure, I personally have a few gripes. When I went back into education in 1985 (because the job situation in the UK was so atrocious), one of the first things we studied was physiology, and we were trained in how to use an actual sphygmomanometer in combination with an actual stethoscope to listen for the Korot’koff Sounds and measure blood pressure, so I already have a very good idea about how to do this with the most basic equipment… but when the new regulations about annual health checks for foreign employees in South Korea kicked in at the end of 2007 (immediately after Lee Myung-bak was elected – remember?), I decided to get my own dumb-bell set plus my own BP meter (as the local Hi-Mart in the centre of Changwon had a range of different models available at the time). I also paid close attention to the technique required in order to avoid systematic errors when taking my BP each day. What I discovered was:
Posture was very important: Whereas the use of the sphygmomanometer/stethoscope pair allowed a range of body positions so that an optimum body posture could be employed (and most specifically, avoiding abdominal compression which would render misleading pressures), not only my own wrist BP meter but also a lot of the ones commonly available in public places involved a position in which the user has to sit down and lean forward. When the patient is overweight, this results in the abdominal fat deposits being compressed, increasing abdominal pressure and giving an elevated reading, so care is needed to find a posture which avoids this error. At home, I now take care to sit with my back straight and no pressure on the abdomen, and abdominal muscles relaxed, measuring elbow on the desk and supported by the other arm, as recommended in the device’s operating instructions.
Muscular exercise (for example, with weight training or more aerobic forms of exercise) causes the muscles to absorb fluid from the rest of the body, lowering the overall blood pressure. This can be seen by monitoring your BP some time after exercise.
Blood pressure taken in the early morning after awakening is usually the lowest (except actually during sleeping) because all body muscles have been relaxed during the night and have yet to tighten up due to normal diurnal body movement. BP peaks during the afternoon and evening and then begins to decline again. At one point (about eleven or twelve years ago) I would get up in the morning and measure my BP and get results like 50/30 (!). A normal (or more accurately, nominal) reading should be approximately 120/80 and even moderate daily exercise should maintain this. Again, measuring your BP some time after a long walk (for example, but allowing time for your body to relax first) should give a reading very close to normal.
My gripe with the typical automatic BP monitor seen in many public places in Korea is precisely this: that they encourage a bad body posture by forcing patients to be slumped forward, increasing abdominal pressure. To this I would add that in Korea, one is not allowed time to rest before taking a seat and being expected to take a measurement. The result is that (again) readings are too high and in the wrong posture to isolate the readings that you are trying to take. I have lost count now of how often – going back at least ten years – I have had to move rapidly between hospital departments for things like routine medical exams. Ridiculous!
Now obviously, with training in biomedical science and having twenty-four-hour Internet access, I do a lot of research online. Norvasc (which was prescribed in the first instance) is supposed to reduce ambient BP by up to 12/6 (systolic/diastolic), but so also is beetroot juice because it contains a lot of nitrate, which the body reduces first to nitrite and then to nitrogen (II) oxide, a potent agent for several processes including the relaxation of the artery wall muscles. I bought a liquidiser but unfortunately it wasn’t powerful enough to cope with raw beetroot, so whilst shopping at Lotte the other day I noticed that they sold at least two beetroot/apple juice combinations (one more expensive than the other). As it happened, after only nine days the Norvasc took my BP down to normal levels, but laboratory blood tests on sample taken concurrently with the initial consultation indicated that I was hyperlipidaemic (i.e. had a level of blood lipids deemed above normal range) and the consultant has now put me on Atacand and Lipitor. The actual blood pressure medication was therefore changed, although I was instructed to finish the last of the Norvasc pills (one per day) before changing to the new prescription.
Although this might seem a rather negative outcome, we have to remember that a lot of what has been observed is the result of an enforcedly static lifestyle. The walking distance between either work and home or home and wherever I would buy food and drink is very short and not likely to result in sufficient exercise; likewise, there is a great shortage of entertainment around here, so the result is an oversupply of food, boredom and a sedentary lifestyle. The human body did not evolve for the urban environment. Also – of course – people are being asked to stay at home while the Coronavirus issue is current, further compounding the problem. The consultant said that I should get at least thirty minutes of walking exercise per day, something which used to be normal until about two years ago because there could often be a long distance between home and work (or, at least, the nearest bus stop). If it had been possible to return to the area here where I used to live – in the north of the city, thirty to forty minutes’ commuting time – this would have been less of a problem, but last year, my manager was very insistent that she wanted me to be living as close as possible to the office in case of the need for a sudden interview. We have had no “sudden interviews” since I returned here, so that seems to have been a waste of time; now we discover that it has been deleterious to my health too.
Happily, at least according to the cardiologist yesterday, this is not an irreversible situation but it does involve a number of lifestyle changes which – to some extent – had already been in place. My alcohol consumption has generally been low recently as I have tended to want to hit the sack rather than stay up; the only trouble being that what I have been drinking has tended to be two or three cans of foreign cider on special offer, the issue here being not just the minimal alcohol input but also the deleterious effects of the sugar – fructose – which is a natural component of cider. My online research seems to suggest that this should also be avoided, but the trouble here is that it is a sweetener added on a truly industrial scale to a whole range of foods and beverages; very difficult to avoid. However, the cardiologist said that for a person my age, this should perhaps be expected, but could be mitigated eventually by diet and sufficient exercise. Now, if it would just stop raining…
Latest Check-up: November 4th 2019
Posted by Andrew | Filed under Cancer Diary, General, Gripes, Living in Korea, Lost Geographies, Odds and Ends..., Uncategorized
Just this Saturday, the hospital’s automated messaging system texted me to let me know that it was time to see Prof. Kim again, and perhaps also render blood samples!
It’s hard to believe that it is now twenty-two months since part of my colon was excised and the two ends stitched together again; hard to believe that in that time I have actually had three jobs (although two of them are the same one) and gone from here to Jinju and back. As it happens, when asked by manager Jamie recently whether I wanted to stay, I gave her a “maybe” answer – until I remembered that too many students really want to teach kids, and this is something that no longer interests me. So later, the answer was “no”… probably because yes, it has been stressful. No kidding!
Another thing that hit me kinda hard – ouch! – was when I wondered if I could find my old domicile, back in the north of Miryang, on Google Street View (yes, unfortunately I still have uses for Google). That was back in March 2009 – ten years ago! – when I finally left Changwon, where I had been for my first six years in Korea, to take on my first public school job, and looking back, I now think that was a major error, especially considering that after I left the KDLI in 2014, I ended up working at the same place in Changwon again, although not for long, as Mr. Lee’s customer base was already shrinking.
Lo! and Behold! – it was still there, and although there had clearly been some more building in the area since I was living there; remarkably the unoccupied plot in front of the entrance was still rough ground with someone’s veggies growing on it. Some things never change!
Anyway, it’s been a long time, and I have been working in so many places around the country, but I still think that Changwon was the best place for actually living, largely I suspect because it has a more “human” scale than bigger places like Busan and Daegu, and actually walking to where you want to go physically rather than taking public transport, for example, is often not unrealistic, not to mention healthier. Miryang was also not actually bad – in fact, getting out of bed early and walking from my place across the island to the school, and walking back again afterwards, was by no means a drawback. Likewise, Changwon is a place where routine exercise (in the sense of getting plenty of walking in) is both easy and pleasurable.
Other changes to my Lost Geography have taken place within the last ten years – relatives, including, alas, my own mother – have passed on in that time and even returning to my own country appears extremely unpalatable; it’s unclear at the moment what the best option might be.
Now we return to today, and my latest conflab with Professor Kim. Since I last saw him, one interesting change has taken place: recently, I came off the generic Lopmin (Imodium) capsules that were prescribed for me as an antidiarrhoeal because I was finding that they were perhaps somewhat too effective (i.e. a bit too powerful for my own sensitive and residual gut); it was at times difficult to pass stools because they were so dry and stiff, so I experimented several times until I felt that I could be confident not to shit my pants at an inopportune moment, such as, for example, when shopping or in the middle of a lesson.
At first it was a bit dodgy, but I think it may have been helped by a couple of things: firstly, the fact that I tend not to drink a lot of water on work days, and secondly that when I do drink on work days, it tends to be quite strong coffee, especially for “breakfast”, which otherwise I normally leave out. On one hand, therefore, there is reduced water intake coupled with a strong diuretic (high-strength, “shoot-me-to-the-Moon” coffee), and on the other, there is the prevention of the gastrocolic reaction by, er, not eating. I think that this combination is assisting my truncated gut to perform its natural dehydration function more normally, as less digested food is passing through it, and secondly my body is running lean on water anyway. The result is mainly stools with normal colour and consistency, although exactly when they demand to be released still tends to be rather random like, say, two or three a.m. Generally, however, it is no longer so bad; I think the main thing is avoiding a large meal to prevent the gastrocolic reaction taking place at an unhelpful moment… I need hardly repeat Professor Kim’s admonition to lose weight.
He and I discussed this and the main problem is getting enough sunlight exposure for my skin to manufacture sufficient Vitamin D naturally. I take a number of supplements for this regularly but obviously, natural is better and my little “issue” here is that normally I have little exposure to sunlight due to the desk-bound work that I often perform (and also spending much of a working day indoors in any case), so getting enough daylight input is rather difficult.
Clearly, this means that the job itself (and the associated work) is therefore something of an “issue”. Another is the preponderance of mainly female prospective students who want to teach kids, something I lost interest in a long time ago. So the adverts are out and I am looking for something new (which I also mentioned to Professor Kim, as this would make routine checks more difficult). Some might complain that perhaps I protest too much and should just suck it up, but the fact remains that after all this time in Korea, some disillusionment has long since set in and the general teaching environment is demotivating for someone like myself. I need something more relevant and appropriate to find my mojo again. I used to teach kids for the purpose of survival, and not because I enjoyed it.
Shortly after my contract ends, I will have to go to the Gu Hospital again to have my colon inspected with a large and fearsome tool, and as I have elected not to re-sign before that time, I don’t know quite where I will be at that exact moment, but as always, I remain optimistic. Time and again a job has come along (sometimes almost too late) and I have been here for another year. I had hoped to have transitioned to something else a long time ago, but unfortunately circumstances have prevented this. Perhaps that is where I should be focusing for the remainder of my time in Korea.
Colonoscopy… Finally…
Posted by Andrew | Filed under Cancer Diary, General, Living in Korea, Uncategorized
At long last, I finally arranged my colonoscopy, which was way overdue and should have been done about five months ago… you’re probably not surprised by now…
What follows is an expanded (slightly) version of a recent FB update, a couple of days later.
So… having surfaced on time with the cell phone alarm too early on a Friday morning (“Fishing Junks at Sunset” by Jean Michel Jarre at literally 4:00am local time), and my sore a-hole having recovered somewhat from yesterday’s probing, I made my way to work and I’m sitting at the front desk now on the last Saturday morning of the current session, with the weekend class sweating away at their Final Exam.
Previously, back in Professor Kim’s consultation room, I had explained that it was not possible to do the colonoscopy that day because of that disgusting “CoolPrep” purgative which had returned whence it came poste-haste, not just because it was retch-inducing in its own right, but also because it was lemon flavoured. I’m allergic to lemon and although on prior occasions I had managed to scarf it all down pretty much as required, this final time my stomach’s reaction couldn’t be prevented.
When the Prof. pointed out that I had apparently taken it with no problems before, I went into “That was then, this is now” mode. Repeated exposure had sensitised me to it, and the result was on the living room floor… he should be grateful; he didn’t have to clean it up afterwards…
I remember waking up Friday morning after the colonoscopy, on the hospital gurney, lying on my back and thinking: “That was over very quickly!”, and indeed it was… beforehand, Dr. Song had told me that it would only take about ten minutes, and it certainly seemed that way; one injection and I was out like a light.
After I came around, a couple of nurses walked me (somewhat unsteadily) back to Doctor Song’s consulting room and he gave me the low-down: they had gone all the way through the remaining colon as far as my appendix, and there were no signs of polyps, no signs of any return of the cancer, really the only visible thing was the healed scar of the anastomosis (the point where Professor Kim had re-joined the severed ends of my colon after the tumour had been removed) could be seen. He showed me the photos taken during the procedure and I have to admit, it did look good. If you can call the appearance of your gut lining “good”, that is…
With that, he told me that I could go, and after changing back into my usual duds, I walked out of the consulting room. As I passed the lobby desk, they handed me a small bottle of Pocari Sweat to help restore lost electrolytes. They had given me a new type of purgative which is taken as discrete pills rather than being drunk as a liquid, the two main disadvantages of which seemed to be – firstly – that you had to (try to) take fourteen (!!!) of them with copious liquid within about fifteen minutes, once the night before and once again very early the next morning before going to the hospital, and – secondly – that these pills were new and not actually covered by the national health insurance, although at KRW35,000 I didn’t feel too put out by the unexpected cost. Thankfully, they were not needed… and I didn’t sleep much… got back home about noon and went to sleep PDQ…
Again, previous experience when I was still learning how to moderate the function of my dysfunctional colon with the Lopmin (an antidiarrhoeal preparation available in discrete capsules) made me take the precaution of packing some diapers (large size of course) in my bag before setting out, with some added inner pads (in case a double diaper was necessary). As it happened, the hot summer weather and the dehydration that accompanies it together have a habit of mimicking the effects of the Lopmin to some extent, so I was able to go to the hospital and back again, by public transport, without any, er, embarrassment… Thankfully, then, they were not needed… and I didn’t sleep much… got back home about noon and went to sleep PDQ…
I have to say that the hospital department seemed to be run as a tight ship and all the patients seemed to be processed quickly and efficiently; the only little “problem” we seemed to have was that the young nurse couldn’t find a suitable arm vein for the Ringer’s solution drip and had to ask for assistance from another nurse after three botched attempts (ouch!), but we got there in the end… ( and two days later, as I sit here editing this, I can still see the bruises).
So now I am sitting in on a quiet Final Exam for the current weekend class. Tonight I will be busy marking their papers, and tomorrow they will graduate… and do you know something? I am looking forward to sleeping on Sunday night…
Final Quarterly Check and the Future
Posted by Andrew | Filed under Cancer Diary, Commentary, General, Gripes, Living in Korea
Regular readers of this pointless screed – all two of you – may have noticed that the due date of the fourth and final quarterly check has come and gone with little from myself by way of the usual commentary, and indeed, you would be quite correct. That, however, is down to my erstwhile employer deciding to let me go when I had expected to re-sign (and even had a two-year apartment contract to prove it). This turned out to be another minor disaster, but we are now close to some kind of resolution, so, blogging time again…
Long-term readers will also recall that when I first set foot on Korean soil, I had signed up for a hagwon job and proceeded to stay in that job for almost six years; it was, in fact, only some shenanigans on the part of my then-boss relating to national pension payments that finally caused me to throw up my arms in despair and transition to my first public school job.
Looking back, that was something of a mistake, and the adventure of transitioning from one employer to another virtually every year since then has been both unwelcome and expensive; before hitting Jinju, I had had the luxury of being able to remain in Daegu for two years, but only because I was fortunate enough to have two successive employers. Hopefully I can put all of that behind me now, but it is curious to observe firstly that Oneself is still somehow considered a desirable foreign employee even when knocking on the doors of 57 (and having had medical treatment for bowel cancer, no less), and secondly that I can return to a previous position with something approaching nonchalance.
As it happened, the last employer had someone else in mind (male, British and younger) who had worked there previously and they therefore had no intention of re-signing me, but had (I heard, don’t ask me how) been given instructions to “go through the motions”. They also had a student feedback system but for some bizarre reason, my co-teacher (who was also the officer in charge) decided not to pass any of it on to me, which would have been quite helpful; in fact, he hardly ever told me anything at all for his remaining time there, leading to a situation (as my Canadian co-worker would probably confirm) in which I was basically flying blind, and spending a lot of my time sitting there with apparently nothing to do. Important information often came to me from his Korean co-worker, something which I gather she also found irritating, to say the least. The final straw for me was when I was handed my annual teacher evaluation (which both of us foreigners actually failed) and one of the students’ comments was: “Please teacher, no more homework!” – which was insane because the speaking classes had no homework. Can you spell “lying, lazy little toerags”?
Thankfully, I received that evaluation the week I left, promptly replaced it in its envelope and forgot about it; after all, my Canadian co-worker, who is a professionally qualified teacher with mucho experience of all kinds of teaching, but ended up sitting next to me having become disenchanted with the outcome of ten years spent teaching at the local university, himself complained about how we were faced with the impossibility of changing our style to be more suitable on account of the fact that at no time had we actually been briefed on the criteria for evaluation. One’s working life in Korea is littered with these scintillating samples of silliness, but looking back, I can vouch for the fact that my experience of similar work in Taiwan was little better.
So… the time came when the final quarterly check was due, and this meant a blood sample (ouch), CT scans and a final poke of the endoscope up one’s nether hole, but alas, it was not all to be: the purgative, this time, was extremely difficult to get down and I ended up with a load of it coming back up from my stomach all over the living room floor of the new apartment, as I made a dizzy dash to the bathroom, early on a Monday morning. That meant that the final endoscopic examination would eventually have to be performed at another hospital where they didn’t use lemon-flavoured (aaarrrghhh) CoolPrep polyethylene glycol plus minerals to push it all out in a matter of hours (it really leaves you drained, in more ways than one, believe me). The following Monday I went to get the results from Professor Kim and he told me that there were no visible signs of the spread of cancer, and I wouldn’t have to go there again for a couple of years, apart from the endoscopy, which would eventually be arranged at another hospital locally. Sounds positive to me!
When we come to the transition back to Daegu from Jinju, alas, it was not so straightforward, although by returning to my usual removal guy, Mr. Cho, I was able to save about ₩500,000 over the previous year’s removal company and, indeed, ₩200,000 from his own quote the previous year! Alas, confusion about where he was supposed to go to and from where meant that I got stung for another ₩100,000 to cover the cost of driving back to Jinju from Daegu before we could finally set off. Then the usual temporary chaos of everything dumped in any open space in the new place (I’m still slowly shoehorning everything into place even now) and the inevitable need to clean up a second time due to the mess this process generates.
Alas again, having already had a prolonged and awkward transition to Jinju from Daegu, I then had the same from Jinju transitioning back to Daegu, but worse – I was not able to get my expensive deposit back immediately because of the particular position of the property – in the north of the town, in a downtown barzydown area full of coffee shops, eateries and noraebangs, away from the “action” which would have been some distance away, around the university – and lost much of my final salary and severance paying the deposit on the new place. Thankfully there has been some minimal cash flow in the interim and at the time of writing, the Jinju landlord has found a new occupant, but I had to take a trip back to the apartment last Monday, as the latter person seemed to think it wasn’t clean enough! I travelled there, spent five or six hours scrubbing the place, then came back to Daegu… to wake up the next morning as stiff as a board, thanks to all that muscular exertion. The good news is that it seems that I may get my deposit (minus costs) back this coming Saturday. So that’s positive, too.
The downside has been that of the two normal sessions which we would have in a week (three weekdays for one course and the weekend days for the other) will not be fully operative until next month (May) as student recruitment is somewhat down again (and hence so is the salary), but the reduced workload has a benefit in the sense that there is an appreciable extent of lesson planning and material preparation and this needs some time to complete. Now, if I can just get enough sleep (yawwwnnn…), I can get it all done.
The other little issue I have been finding is that the combination of downtime and excess effort, on top of being notionally still a cancer patient, has all been very demotivating; everything has seemed to be a drag and this is not “me” at all. When confronted with impending mortality in the shape of a gut tumour, then the operation and sharing a very small cancer ward with others clearly in rather worse shape than myself, and then heartlessly being told that I was being released from my job and everything else that followed on it… you have no idea the levels of stress I have had to cope with at the same time as having to handle all these other things; the FDD had literally only just been removed and I had returned to my old Daegu home on a January afternoon when the phone call came, telling me that I would need to find something new! You have no idea what strength I have had to pull together, and from how deep within myself this has had to come; unbelievable. My mind has been greatly changed by this experience; I have no patience any more – none at all. If anyone gives me any hassle of any description, I will be triggered because I just cannot stand being messed around or held up any more. As Beethoven discovered before he wrote his Heiligenstadt Testament, Fate has knocked at the door, and one emerges from the experience transformed, although not in a way that many people would consider positive because one now takes a very negative view of a lot of one’s environment, society, politics etc. Zero tolerance from now on. No more bullshit. Everything I see is stupid, and disgusts me.
To conclude, when we ask the question of what happens next, I will be remaining in this position for some time to come, unless something dire happens. The new apartment is great-ish, being of very stable temperature when the weather is cold (and it was surprisingly cold until the middle of April) and having a small blessing in the form of an actual wardrobe next to the bedroom, something I have not been fortunate to have before. It is easy to keep clean (although I am still trying to rid the place of the odour of the previous occupant’s dog food) and there are marts and convenience stores a-plenty here, although there is not much in the way of entertainments, but I dare say I will find something eventually (as I don’t have a good cash flow right now, maybe staying home and getting the paperwork done is preferable).
Hopefully, as the financial situation improves, I will be able to get about a bit more, especially as one advantage of working weekends is that your own “weekend” is a couple of weekdays, so you can actually get shit done. Likewise, things which have broken down/worn out/disappeared in the last year or so should be replaced fairly swiftly (and I have been rather put out by how things have been suddenly becoming non-functional). The bottom line in my experience, however, remains true: that when the going gets rough, you have to make a decision. When faced with possible premature mortality in the form of cancer, and having never needed major surgery before, I decided that the reward was worth the risk. When ousted from my still-new job because of the need for treatment, I found a new job and relocated; and so it goes on. Life remains a series of decisions, and one surely discovers oneself, in the most literal understanding of the expression, when the decisions you are faced with relate directly to your survival.
Swings and Roundabouts
Posted by Andrew | Filed under General, Gripes, Living in Korea, Uncategorized
So here’s the thing… the Air Force had their interview session at the end of last month, and decided not to re-sign me, and to some extent, I am actually sympathetic to their POV. However, that meant that I had to start looking for something new (which has evolved into a continuous process over the years; it merely becomes more intense at certain points).
As part of this, I approached my previous employer on the off-chance that they might reconsider and take me on (bearing in mind that they always seem to have some kind of retention problem). My old manager seems to want me back also, and she said that she would try to find some arrangement with the senior management…
Fast-forward to today, and I had already set up a couple of online conflabs with recruiters (one in the morning, one in the afternoon). The first was a pre-interview discussion with the recruiter before going to see a place in Daegu tomorrow afternoon (and I am going to do that, so off to bed early-ish tonight), and wouldn’t you believe it, Skype settings were out and we had to use the cell phone instead… the second was with another recruiter discussing what I was looking for, optimally, by which time I had sorted the sound out on Skype, but he didn’t have a camera…
Anyway, as this meant another brief jaunt to Daegu, I let my previous manager know about it. She in turn took this as a cue to contact Head Office in Gangnam re the “Andrew Situation” and apparently, the latter think that I should go to Seomyeon (literally around the corner from my old employer, YBM) in Busan for training at the end of the month before resuming duties in March.
Ahhh, but there will be a fly in the ointment: there was much bad feeling between myself and the upper echelons last time, firstly because I already had accommodation, was happy with it and did not like the size or state of what they were offering me, refused to move out and expected them to pay for it; and they did… because, of course, it was actually part of their contract. Secondly, however, they surveyed me regarding the perceived efficacy of their “training”, and I gave them rather low scores; I gather that they were not pleased… whatever.
This time, of course, the situation is very different. The accommodation offered by the Air Force last year was basically a single high-schooler’s room with a (very small and rather shitty) ensuite bathroom; I arrived with little less than a house full of furniture and a pile of books and other stuff to follow, and there was no way that it would all fit in, even though it might otherwise have been possible. Why? Essentially because each room was allocated fixed furniture (i.e. was intended to be permanently resident there until replaced) and this had to stay in the room. However, I had – only a short time before – purchased both a new (large) desk and a very new bed; and I was not prepared to part with any of my stuff, so I had to find a place in town. Luckily the Air Force has its own coaches, and one of these does regular rounds each day ferrying people to and from the town with a set route. That part wasn’t too bad, but it did cost me ₩400,000/month plus utilities. Hint: the AF doesn’t offer any financial assistance for external accommodation…
Now if I go back to Daegu, I will have the same problem again if I go back to my old employer; Chris, the Canadian who came up from Seomyeon to take my place, finishes his contract soon and you can bet he doesn’t have any of his own furniture. At the same time, another possible job in the centre of town would require me to find a new (unfurnished ) place thereabouts, which is unlikely to be as cheap (!) as its predecessor there. This situation arose because (in the course of my travels around the country) accommodation would alternately be unfurnished (and therefore a right pain) and then furnished, then unfurnished, etc., until I decided that I had to be obstinate and insist upon places being unfurnished to avoid forever having to buy stuff and then get rid of it, again and again, despite the fact that it was new because the next place did not have sufficient space.
This all got real old, real fast…
I hate to refuse an offered job which is actually what I want, but because of everything that has gone before, I am likely to blow a gasket tomorrow. It was because of all of this shit that I learned to say “no” in Korea; and so there is also a Plan D in the back of my mind which involves a D-10 visa and staying put in Jinju for a couple of extra months. Just sayin’…
The final point of attrition is this: this same company released me early last year (they said that I had agreed to it, but I hadn’t), so I lost my final month’s salary payment, my severance pay, had to pay another month’s rent and utilities on the old apartment because I couldn’t move out immediately, had to lay down five million deposit on the new place plus the first month’s rent on the new place, and of course, all of this went down at the most expensive time of year for moving, which cost me another 1.3 million… oh, and I also had to pay for my operation in the University Hospital… do the math (as they say). In addition, as they have proven quite incapable of recruiting sufficient students for a quorum for both their weekday and weekend courses, for five of the ten months I was actually working there, I only received half salary (as payments depend on lessons, right).
What kind of mood would you be in at this point?
There is a whole set of issues relating to the employment of foreigners to teach English here. Long-term readers (all two of you) will recall my previous remarks, long, long ago, of my co-worker whose (American) friend decided to leave because every employer here seemed to expect new employers to be twenty-something graduates with two suitcases and a drink problem, yada yada yada, and that is certainly demonstrated as fact by experience, but another is that many outfits consider bean-counting to be good business practice rather than efficient operation and profitability, resulting in the kind of race to the bottom more characteristic of the average App Store. That means that very often, the foreign teacher is accommodated in something rather reminiscent of an English shoe box, and if you are the kind of person who likes to study, learn by tinkering with shit and collect books and things, it’s not conducive to comfortable life. That’s the issue.
So tomorrow may be fraught. Frankly, I am not in the mood to do anything remotely involving “negotiation” and you can bet your last <insert financial units of choice here> that the management of the company have decided what they want, and that’s not what I want.
Watch this space…
The Next Day…
What a surprise! It seems that the company is now solvent and confident enough to offer the full assistance to the employee to help pay for their independent accommodation; the only snag being that the previous incumbent will still be there until he leaves, and therefore my manager will have to help me find a new place (and it will have to be unfurnished, of course…). This is because… he has to familiarise me with the materials, which have been simplified (and one probably altered completely). I will then have to go to the company’s offices in Busan, where he used to work (and come to think of it, so did I, but… different company) for some pertinent training.
Before all of that transpired, there was the appointment at the adult hagwon that had been arranged by a recruiter the previous day. I had located the place in a side road close to the Banwoldang subway station and went in but, oh dear… clearly a good place, but wanting me to do things that I don’t have either experience or interest in. Debate, IELTS, movies, no thank you, and I said so. Apparently they were expecting me to just walk in and sign up; but I didn’t, not least because I had to go to the other place possibly also to discuss signing up. Embarrassing; but this has been a regular occurrence with recruiter-mediated interviews over the last few years.
Something odd has happened in the recruitment process in Korea… I’ve been having more joy sometimes doing the whole thing myself. I kid you not. Increasingly I am being told about possible positions but being oversold in some way… I had already been thinking that despite efforts on my part to avoid it, people looking at my resume were seeing things that weren’t there, as if reading between the lines and filling in the white space with what they were looking for. This will never work, because it means they are making assumptions without discussing things properly with me beforehand, possibly also misrepresenting me to the customer, and wasting everyone’s time. Might I also suggest that the recruiter should have been asking about whether I had anything else under consideration (which I did).
So now I have to pack everything up again and get ready to go back to where I have been before… but hey, look on the bright side: you get the full salary and they give you a monthly wedge for your digs, and with that kind of remuneration, you can afford somewhere decent, even in Daegu.
Edited February 9th, 2019
Cancer Update: Third Quarterly Check
Posted by Andrew | Filed under Cancer Diary, General, Gripes, Living in Korea
Things seem to be proceeding in a satisfactory fashion… but once I sat down and started writing, this blog suddenly became unexpectedly long!
After visiting Daegu again last Tuesday, I made sure to text Professor Kim on the Friday morning reminding him about letting me know the results as soon as possible – and reminded him again by text the following Monday morning (just in case, you understand). He very kindly obliged a short while later with his usual reassuring “nothing to worry about” response.
However, as if a mere text message (from the Male Professor Kim) were not enough, his locum last Tuesday, (the female) Professor Kim actually called me yesterday (Tuesday) lunch time to pass on the news. Which surprised me, firstly because I tend to receive very few calls on my cell phone at any time, and secondly precisely because of that exact time, as it would otherwise (probably) be one of those annoying advertorial-type robotised calls from the phone service provider (in this case, LG), which has been a regular irritation ever since I first signed up with them. Unfortunately I have (after fifteen long years here) still not learned enough Korean to understand what their automated calls are actually about, so they remain a noisy, jangling and rather pointless mystery. I realise that this is Korea (where English is not the native language), but surely, by now, there is a sufficient quorum of native English speakers to justify at least a minimal English language service?
We might now ask the question: where to from here on? As this is the third of four quarterly blood tests, the last will be in February and will include a (hopefully final) CT scan to give a visualisation of any otherwise undetected neoplasms. Not sure right now how frequently after that it will be necessary to keep checking, but rest assured that despite a constant feeling of tiredness (due to having to hit the bathroom several times each night), I am feeling well, with only the odd twinge of still-unsettled fatty tissues resulting from the operation itself to remind me that it ever happened… and starting to think about what I will be doing next year.
Looking back over the previous twelve or thirteen months, the remarkable thing has been how painless the detection, treatment, removal and convalescence have been in the course of all this. Using the robot for a laparoscopic procedure avoided a lot of the tissue damage that would have resulted from a more conventional (i.e. open) abdominal technique, and hence faster recovery and much less post-operative pain. There is no doubt in my mind, however, that I would have been much happier remaining in my previous job than having to find and secure a new one. This would have made the immediate post-operative period much less stressful – not to mention less expensive.
Something does need to be said, however, about the reactions of other people to the process, as my rapid recovery may have made them think that everything was normal. I assure you that this is not the case; although I may appear to be walking around in my typical manner, it is simply not possible to lose a foot of irreplaceable large intestine and not experience adverse effects. That part of the body is largely responsible for the removal of water from your solid wastes (as digestion is largely focused in the stomach and small intestine), and removing it compromises this function. This means that you need some kind of pharmaceutical intervention – the Lopmin capsules – to slow down the natural process of peristalsis and increase the residence time of food in the gut, thereby allowing it to remove water to a more normal consistency of stools. Alas, perhaps, my gut seems to be quite sensitive to Lopmin and the result of this is that I have made a habit of coming off the treatment temporarily at weekends to allow it all to pass out, as even the most minimal daily quantity still seems to be slightly too much, resulting in a regular ‘plug’ of drier material which is difficult to void at first. Having said that, the feeling afterwards is wonderful, but you do start to feel somewhat bloated by the mid-week…
Part of the reason for this is that the differing lumen diameters at the two joined ends make voiding (and retention) more difficult than they were originally. The part of the gut removed was that which (under normal circumstances) is perhaps less involved with desiccation and more with storage prior to voiding. This meant that semi-liquid digested food would otherwise be difficult to contain until at least some of the storage function could be restored – but to achieve that, the narrow lumen in the upper part of the anastomosis (the point where the upper and lower ends were joined) has to expand sufficiently, and the simplest way to achieve that, it seems, is to relax the smooth muscle in the gut wall so that the wall itself can expand to accomodate what needs to be, er, retained. It is no exaggeration to say that without Lopmin, retention would be impossible and I would always have to be a short dash from the nearest rest room; I kid you not. So that bloated feeling does at least give some reassurance that you are not going to shed a stinky load in a public place at five seconds’ notice, which was much how it was immediately after the operation. For this reason, I am also hanging on to my small supply of adult diapers…
All of which has meant that another regime of health management has had to be incorporated into my lifestyle. It is not hugely taxing, as in reality it amounts to little more than acquiring a few additional minor habits, but one’s social life is affected by all of this, and diet also. For example, I would not wish to be out every Friday or Saturday night because nowadays I am using this time to allow the release of several days’ stools, meaning that I have to stay at home for convenience; likewise, it is not a good idea to eat too much because what goes down must, eventually, come out, and one may become rather bloated by midweek without some attention to what one is eating. Finally, it is worth remembering that there is something of a moratorium on alcohol consumption with a view to avoiding the retardation of the healing process, at least for the first post-operative year.
The impression has come upon me that my apparent wellness has demonstrably been misleading to onlookers, who think that I am fully recovered and able to resume everything one hundred per cent. right now, but this is far from the truth. For example, I have been told that it would be helpful to lose weight, and I cannot do this if people constantly insist on offering me food. Sugar in particular is known as the primary fuel of cancer, and it has been proving difficult to transition to a more suitably ketogenic diet; the environment here does not seem to support it – indeed, from a sugar-avoidance point of view, Korea is getting worse due to a rise in the presence of franchised, Westernised-style restaurants, coffee shops and other places like the Paris Baguette and Tous les Jours-style bakeries. Professor Kim’s original admonition to avoid carbohydrate and err towards more animal protein has one unfortunate aspect, in that it requires spending more on food at a time when my salary is being squeezed by things like paying for my own accommodation, and repayment of the operation (and other associated) costs. Whic I think is also slowly tapping this job on the head!
At work, the offerings at the restaurants are essentially for younger people who need a lot of energy for their daily exercise, and hence there is a lot of carbohydrate available in the form mainly of rice. I am not saying that there is anything bad about the rice, as it makes the other food easier to eat, but it is a kind of food to avoid most of the time if a recurrence of the cancer is to be avoided, for reasons which have been discussed here previously. Anything alcoholic (other than, say, wine) necessarily tends to have associated sugar components if only to make the alcohol more palatable, so this should really be avoided, too. Even the beverages we have in our office are essentially laced with sugar and sweet creamers, as they come in sticks and the ones without sugar are virtually undrinkable. It is for this reason that I recently purchased a new coffee maker (as the old one was truly dying the death), as strong black coffee is actually a good thing – especially when you stagger out of bed of a weekday morning. Maintaining a low-carbohydrate diet is proving unexpectedly difficult, however.
All of which is making me think that a situation like last year would be much better – same style of employment, housing and diet – but that would mean losing this job and (probably) relocating to a new city, too. The bottom line, however, is that the expense of changing my diet (and other elements of lifestyle) would be far easier if I did not have to lose so much each month on renting my apartment, something which is almost unheard of among foreign English teachers in Korea. So we come to the run-up to Christmas this year with something of a quandary – stay in the current job and lose money on rent which would otherwise be helpful for my diet, or give it up and find something more suitable.
Decisions, decisions…
Third Quarterly Check: November
Posted by Andrew | Filed under Cancer Diary, General, Living in Korea, Uncategorized
Here we go again…
A brief(ish) mention of my overnight trip back to Daegu for the third quarterly blood sampling to check that I am still non-cancerous… and how time flies! After some confusion about exactly when my (ahem) employer was going to permit me to take a day off, I got permission for Tuesday (today) and so went to work yesterday morning with a sports bag (black, of course) packed with bed wear and a second set of everything, made my way by taxi to the local train station, and… had to wait two hours because I was too late for the 6:15 train to East Daegu Station. What a surprise. Not.
Some time later (over two hours later, in fact) I was finally able to board the waiting Mugunghwa [1] train and make my leisurely way to my destination. Alas! The arrival time was 10:40 p.m. and I had been out of bed at 6:00 a.m., so the evening was to pass by slowly with me trying not to drop off, as I first had to make my way to my now-customary doss close to the University Dental School (and I knew about this because I stayed there the first time I wentto Daegu, because the new apartment, just across the road, was standing vacant), then went to see if my favourite small watering-hole-cum-eaterie was still closed, as it had been the last time I was there…
Imagine my surprise to discover that it had actually changed ownership, and the new incumbent had installed a huge, stainless steel booze dispenser with taps for not only Guinness and Indica, but also Lindemann’s Kriek (cherry ale)! A customer could simply refill their glass at a rate of 340 won for each liquid ounce. But I stuck resolutely to a small amount of vodka and tonic, which cost a mere 4,000 won and did not appear to be the cheapest (because the cheapest vodkas available in Korea resemble battery acid all too closely…). This was used to wash down a small plate of cheesy potato fries with a hot chili sauce, after which I went back to my room, thinking that 12:30 a.m. was still a bit late considering that an early awakening was necessary (even on a day off work) due to having a 9:30 a.m. appointment.
Back to the room, picked up two cans of Somersby and drank part of one after a shower… and woke up in agony later that morning, having absent-mindedly allowed myself to have a quick stretch, and forgetting that this usually results in a painful Achilles tendon… I lay on the bed cursing in agony until the pain subsided, but thereafter was hobbling around (I can still feel it now that I am back home). Morning ablutions and packing completed, I handed the room key back and wandered out into the morning sunlight.
I made my way to the hospital via the subway and didn’t have long to wait before seeing “another” Professor Kim (female this time) and she asked me how things have been, and I responded that there seemed to be no problems other than occasional twinges from the robot’s entry wounds, and she said that this was normal. They also said that some time before the end of the first post-operative year, they would like me to a second CT scan, and of course, this immediately creates issues, as I have a job that I am expected to do and have to travel between towns each time there is a check-up, and the cost of this also adds up. So I will have to get back to my original Prof. Kim about that to arrange a time.
Interview concluded, I paid for my tests, got the receipt and went to the open phlebotomy parlour, waited my turn and put out my left arm for the attentions of Dracula (actually a young female phlebotomist). I had to strip off a number of items of clothing beforehand, as the November weather had been getting to me and I was now wearing an extra layer or two, then put them back on again a few minutes later. There must be a more efficient way of doing this!
Then I paid another visit to Jamie, my former manager, who was in attendance in her office down the road even though there were no lessons on a Tuesday, and gave her an update about how things were going in Jinju over a small cup of warm tangerine tea. The university buildings were very quiet, as usual, and our conversation was punctuated only by the brief presence of a maintenance technician (I would never refer to such a person as an ‘engineer’ like they do here) to reload the photocopier with a new toner cartridge, plus a small number of phone calls. Then I said goodbye, and returned to the subway to get back to East Daegu Station.
As luck would have it, there was a KTX going south and due to arrive in only a few minutes. The problem? The girl behind the ticket counter had quite a strong accent and I had difficulty hearing her over the counter, but we eventually understood each other and I grabbed my ticket and quickly made my way down to platform 7, and was soon on my way. Without even time to grab anything to eat or drink. But I got back to Jinju, grabbed a taxi home, picked up some more allergy pills on the way and made my way back to the apartment.
Anyway, I arrived back feeling rather tired – not a lot of sleep the last couple of days – but lessons are basically finished for the duration and much of what remains is merely paperwork, which will occupy the rest of my time this week. The second CT scan will have to wait until next month. Perhaps. Possibly. Maybe. We’ll see what happens – the results of the blood tests should be available soon.
1: “Mugunghwa” meaning, we are told, “Rose of Sharon”. Sounds a strange name for a flower for a country in East Asia, but who am I to comment?
