Shoulder Surgery

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I decided to get surgery on Friday, March 13th.

The question of whether or not to get surgery has been an internal struggle since last year. In March I partially dislocated my left shoulder playing volleyball. I can’t remember the first incident of something like that happening, but for the last ten years both my shoulders have partially dislocated many times. I don’t remember it being a problem when I was younger, but now it’s something that controls me. I never know what will cause it. One time I was lying on my bed on my elbows reading, I sneezed, maybe slightly more violently than normal and it caused my right shoulder to click out.

In March when it happened, I thought that like previous times the pain would eventually subside. It didn’t. As spring turned into summer, the ache in my shoulder became a part of me, it was like a mole I couldn’t remove; when I woke up, while driving, cutting vegetables, writing on the whiteboard, anything I did in my daily life it was always there. In July I decided to go to a doctor, but he didn’t tell me anything new. When I went home in August I thought the distraction and change of place would take my mind off the pain. I thought maybe it was a mentally self-inflicted focus, but it wasn’t. Being out of my routine helped though. I thought about it less, but it didn’t leave. It too booked a round-trip flight from Seoul to JFK. When I came back to Korea I decided I needed an MRI, seven hundred dollars later I had one. The doctor told me I had some inflammation, but if I took anti-inflammatory medicine and did some exercises it should go away. It didn’t.

I realized while traveling in the Philippines that I couldn’t continue like this. I have a plan to travel around Asia for ten months when I leave Korea and then to live in Australia for a bit. Even if that wasn’t my plan, I’m not insured in the U.S, I wouldn’t be able to have it there. That meant that my only option was to have it in Korea as soon as possible. Luck would be on my side.

I was worried. If you’ve read my previous blog posts you know that my school has recently had problems with my vacation requests. If I chose to get surgery I’d have to miss school. Something I wasn’t looking forward to. However, the coronavirus saved me. School was supposed to start March 3, but because of the virus, it was pushed back until March 9. I was on home quarantine until March 14, which meant that I’d miss the first week back, but because of the coronavirus schools were again delayed until March 16. Surgery, however, would now make me miss the new first week of school, but again came the coronavirus. Nationally all schools were delayed until March 23 and with surgery on the 13 and then the hospital mandated week stay after, it means that I will miss no classes.

In the U.S., when you have shoulder surgery it doesn’t require an overnight stay in the hospital, but because hospitals in Korea are moneymaking factories (cheaper than the U.S though), they make you stay for a week following it. You also have to come the day before the surgery to do tests and stay the night. My room was a five-person shared room. It was like staying in a nursing home, my four roommates were old Korean men. The nurses speak very little English and because of the coronavirus we aren’t allowed to eat in the cafeteria, the food is brought to us on our bed. We always have to wear a face mask and with no one to talk to it’s like being in solitary confinement.

Friday the 13th was the day of my surgery. At 2:30 in the afternoon, they came into my room and told me it was time. I was nervous. In the OR there was a central room and off to the sides were four operating rooms, mine was room three. It was like being in Willy Wonka’s TV room, but without the Oompa Loompas. The room seemed disproportionately big compared to the empty space around the operating table in the center. They told me to lay down, more nurses came in, there were eight of them speaking Korean, they moved me into a taco-like position, in broken English one nurse tried to tell me she was going to administer anesthesia, I tried to ask her how long it will take me to fall asleep after, she answered “one and a half hours,” I said “no” and tried to ask again, finally someone understood and translated, all she said was “soon.”

When I woke up my first thought was that I had way too much to drink. Why were the lights so bright? I couldn’t move my left arm, but I could my hands. I felt extremely hungover and then it slowly came to me that I didn’t drink, I just had shoulder surgery. My arm was in a sling. I was confused. It was 5:30 pm, how did so much time pass and what happened during the surgery? The surgery was only supposed to take thirty minutes. When I got to my room tears streaked down my eyes, I was alone. I felt awful and had no one to talk to. I called my co-teacher to speak to someone and I started to cry again as we spoke. I badly needed water and I hadn’t drank or eaten all day, but I needed to wait until 11:30 pm. I felt as if I was sitting in a desert. It was torturous. I tried swishing water in my mouth, but it almost made me throw up. I had to pee really badly, but couldn’t. Apparently, it’s an effect of anesthesia. Twelve hours later I finally went. I didn’t sleep at all. I think at midnight a nurse came in. We had to use a translator to communicate. She came in again after two. Was it a dream? At 5 am another came in and at 7 am breakfast was served. I passed on eating the fish and stuck to the egg, soup, and rice. I was in the hospital for seven more days. The long recovery begins. Six weeks in a sling and then months of rehabilitation afterwards.

It’s been exactly a week since I’ve gotten the surgery and things have drastically improved. I’m still in the hospital, but I’ll leave on Saturday the 21st. On Monday we were allowed to go up to the cafeteria. The food quality drastically improved, the cooks started giving me a vegetarian soup if the soup had meat in it and choosing my food allowed me to pass on the ones I didn’t feel like eating, like kimchi and fermented vegetables at breakfast. The effects of the anesthesia have disappeared allowing me to go to the bathroom when I feel like I have to. The pain has drastically decreased to a dull ache. I’ve showered three times and every time it’s terrifying, my arm and shoulder feel extremely vulnerable out of the sling. Now, it feels less like solitary confinement (that may have been an exaggeration) and more like normal life in Korea.

Even though the nurses don’t speak English they are extremely friendly and I’ve found that the guys who work the night-shift at the reception speak a little bit of English. Before bed, I go for a walk and chat for a bit. Also as the youngest person and only foreigner in here, I’m like a little celebrity. One of the workers, Mr. Che was extremely helpful in answering any questions. The other day after breakfast he took pictures of me “modeling.” I hope these end up somewhere in the hospital one day. Maybe it is Stockholm syndrome and the hospital is my captor, but my experience has been extremely positive. If I could rate the hospital, I’d give it five stars. It feels and looks more like a hotel.