Recovery Update and Donut Rejects

Filed under: Korea — Jeff in Korea at 10:32 am on Monday, November 20, 2006

Recovery Update

I am at the two-week mark since my re-admission to the hospital and second surgery. According to the doctor all is well in legsville. He said the bone looks good.

We are just taking things a lot slower this time around. The splint I wore for one week last time is still on after two weeks. We are all being extra careful. However, I am looking forward to the day when I can roll over on my side…or sit up straight…or go to the toilet by myself.

Donut Rejects

Saturday, I heard that Pusan’s first Krispy Kreme donut shop was was opening about a five-minute walk from my office, and that saturday was the grand opening.

My first thought was, “Great! There is a Krispy Kreme five minutes from my office!” My second thought was “Crap! My office is moving half-way across the city in one week!” My third thought was, “Hey! My hospital is only five minutes from Krispy Kreme and I will be here for another month at least.” My fourth thought was, “Send my brother to go get Krispy Kreme donuts!”

So. The brother went over to the donut shop. There was nobody in line. The door was open and the entry way was surrounded by colorful balloons. The inviting, yet sickly sweet smell of fresh Krispy Kreme dounts blanketed the area. The door was guarded by two sentries; “two ugly chicks in their early 20s with balloons in their hands.” As my brother attempted to enter, he was blocked by the chicks.

“Do you have an invitation,” one chick asked.

My brother replied, “No. Do I need one?”

The other chick said, “Yes. Private party.”

My brother was promptly turned away. Refused admittance to a donut shop.

He returned to the hospital vowing never to set foot inside the elitist, exclusionary donut shop again. “Let them have their little private party!”

CRAP! Just when things start to go well…

Filed under: Daily Life, Korea — Jeff in Korea at 7:12 pm on Saturday, November 11, 2006

Time for a bit of an update.

After about a week out of the the hospital things were going well. My physical therapy went well. Progress was made. My physical checkups went well.

On Saturday, 4 November 2006, I went in for my scheduled check up. They took x-rays. However, because the doctor’s wife was giving birth, he was out of the hospital and not able to keep the appointment. It was rescheduled for Wednesday, 8 November.

Saturday went well.. I went to work as usually, enjoyed a relaxing evening at home, and stayed up late doing work on the computer.

When I woke up Sunday morning, there was a huge bulge in the thigh muscles of my right leg muscle. It was right in the group of muscles that I had been stretching most the previous day. My leg hurt a lot. I thought it was just very sore muscles from the extra exercise I did the day before. So, I lounged in bed and took it easy for a while.

Finally, I had to get up and go to the bathroom. When I sat up, it was incredibly painful to move my right leg. I eventually got it off the end of the bed. When I went to stand up, my thigh flexed into a very high arch. That wasn’t good.

I rationalized that I would contine to lounge around in bed and if it wasn’t better, I would go to the hospital in the morning. It wasn’t better, so I went to the hospital on Monday morning.

The doctor looked at the x-rays as I went into his office. As I prepared to sit down, he said, “Shit!” in English and ordered me not to sit down. He showed me the x-ray taken saturday morning….the titanium plate in my leg and cracked and broken - and rebroken my leg in the process….that explained the big arch in my thigh.

He said that he would start the hospital re-admittance process while I went down for current x-rays. After standing there for about five minutes, I had come within a few heartbeats of fainting, so I laid me out on his table while waiting for a mobile table to take me to the x-ray room.

The new x-rays showed that my leg was indeed broken again.and that the old titanium plate would have to be removed and replaced.

I underwent surgery again on the morning of Tuesday, 7 November. They took out the broken plate and replaced it with a new, longer and bigger titanium plate, then also took a chunk of bone from my hip, crushed it up into some sort of mush, and grafted it onto the broken bits of my femur. They also cut about one centimeter of bone out of the middle of my femur where it was broken and put the flatened ends of the bone together.

So, the long and short of things are that I am in the hospital again for at least the next 6 weeks, going through exactly that same thing I just went through, but longer and more painful.

The broken plate was sent to the manufacturer for testing and investigation. I am not holding my breath that the company will make any admission that their product was faulty.

Kim Jong-Il Interprets Sunrise As Act Of War

Filed under: Korea — Jeff in Korea at 1:51 am on Friday, November 3, 2006

Another brilliant article from the Onion. This one is so accurate that it is spooky.

PYONGYANG, NORTH KOREA–Increasingly defiant toward international pressure since his nation’s first nuclear test in early October, North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il condemned this morning’s sunrise, calling it “another hostile, deliberately timed act by the world community” and “a clear and blatant declaration of war.”

According to North Korean military sources, the sunrise, sighted at 6:17 a.m. by patrolling officers, was not fully confirmed until an hour later, at which time Kim assessed the threat himself, and immediately released a harshly worded warning to the U.S. and the United Nations Security Council.

“The Democratic People’s Republic Of Korea condemns, in the strongest possible terms, this act of aggression on our eastern border,” read a statement printed in the state-run Korean Central News Agency. “If another act of this nature occurs at any time in the next 24 hours, we will be left with no choice but to retaliate with the full might and power of our armed forces.”

In addition to denouncing the “imperialist invasive assault,” Kim also supplied the U.N. with an extensive list of “unacceptable” international actions. According to Kim’s list, North Korea will no longer tolerate the encroachment of Japanese waters onto its western shore, will view the accumulation of cumulus clouds in restricted airspace as acts of intimidation, and will not hesitate to respond militarily to any “violent and unprovoked bursts of wind.”

Kim outlined further “extreme transgressions” that would be worthy of more immediate and serious military retaliation.
Kim described an “angry” North Korean army that has been “roused from its peaceful slumber” by a hostile act.

“Economic sanctions on North Korean imports and exports, the reintroduction of cuff links as a fashion accessory, a sudden drop in lower-middle-class spending habits, sporadic changes in the migratory patterns of monarch butterflies, the announcement of yet another new sports drink, a daily rise in the Dow Jones Industrial Average higher than 3.5 points, shorter hemlines, inspections of North Korean cargo in an attempt to intercept weapons or weapons parts, or the release of a new U2 album—any of these actions will be interpreted as an act of war, and force us to take drastic measures to protect our sovereignty,” said Kim in a written statement, which also warned that the world’s third-largest standing army is prepared to deliver a “merciless blow at a moment’s notice” if the leaves begin to turn colors and fall from the trees of North Korea. “Though we desire peace, we have seen the signs of war on the horizon, and we are not afraid to act.”

Despite claims from China that Kim’s statements are “nothing more than hollow threats,” the U.S. remains worried that the communist republic may test a second nuclear weapon in response to Sony’s new line of 62-inch flat-screen television sets.

“The United States wants nothing more than to engage the North Koreans in diplomatic talks, but we will not simply cave in to these bullying tactics,” said Secretary Of State Condoleezza Rice, who called the Asian nation’s response to Wednesday’s events “politically questionable.” “That said, we are carefully reviewing their demands, and believe we can find some common ground on concerns over NBC’s Thursday-night lineup.”

Kim Jong-Il decried Rice’s remarks, the side to which her hair was parted, and the fact that she was wearing blue, calling each an “indisputable and highly charged admission of war that North Korea will not be cowed by.”