Today (Friday) was an interesting experience. All the new staff had to go to the hospital for our physicals. Part of living and working in Korea requires health examinations. They want to make sure we are healthy and not a burden on their system or that god forbid we're carrying any communicable diseases into the country. So at 8 AM thirty-two people boarded a bus and off to the hospital we went. We arrived at this huge, modern complex of a building. I believe the hospital is actually part of a university, so it was sprawling. We followed our school nurse and other staff through a labyrinth of hallways and arrived to the main entrance. We stood there for a minute until the Korean staff said we had to go to another location. We walked down several sets of steps and ended up in a parking garage. I was beginning to grow concern that this health exam may have been subterfuge for something much more nefarious, but we simply walked a few feet to another entrance.
All of us piled into a stark classroom and we were split into five groups. I was in group four, which meant I would have to go even longer without eating since we had to fast since 8 PM the night before. They came in and called each group one at a time. When group three left the room is was evident that they had split us up by age since everyone with gray hair and over fifty were left in the room. I didn't know if they left the old people to last because we took more time or because they were planning on disposing of us like in the movie Soylent Green with Charleston Heston.
When our turn came, we were led up three sets of steps. A young Korean guy explained the procedure to us. We would be given a wrist band, but not like the cheap plastic wrist bands you get in the States. These were stylish bracelets with porcelain-like numbers on them. These numbers turned out to be a chip. As you went from x-ray, to audiology, to phlebotomy you simply held your wrist band up against a black screen and it logged all your information into the computer. Your number was then displayed on a monitor and this monitor kept the order in which your name would be called. When your number was called, the door slid open automatically and in you went.
Before we received the band, the men were led into the locker room and we were given these beige scrubs to wear. They were very fashionable - they reminded me of what the crew wore in Star Trek when they were off-duty. So within no time all of us were dressed in the same garb and looked as we were about to worship at a local Buddhist temple. Once in our uniforms, we were led by very pleasant Korean women from one door monitor the next. Swipe your wrist against the plate; watch your name appear (in Korean); wait for your order number, and then sit outside the room until your turn.
The chest x-ray was a challenge because the man didn't speak much English, and when he did you couldn't understand him. You had to stand close to the machine, grab the hold bars, press your chest against the plate, breathe in, hold it, then breathe out. All very simple if you could understand the garbled English. Since I couldn't, I was zapped with two x-rays.
Getting my blood drawn was very easy. The technician was actually very good and I didn't even feel the needle. Next was blood pressure, height, and weight. I'm glad the weight was done in metric so I had no idea how much I weighed. Blood pressure was normal. Not that it would matter because the Koreans would consider all of us obese, even the PE teacher with the 29 inch waist who looks as if he's on the Kevorkian diet.
Finally I had the eye and hearing test. I was most nervous about the eye test because I forgot my glasses. Even with the LASIK eye surgery that I had back in May, I still struggle with fine print. I did have my sunglasses, so I used them, but it was dark in the room already and I felt like Ray Charles. Since she wasn't even watching me when she pointed, I leaned forward, squinted, and sometimes used both eyes to see the numbers. In other words, I cheated. In the audiology room, I could barely hear the tones. At one point I didn't hear anything for ten seconds, so I randomly pushed the button thinking that there must be tones going off and I'm just not hearing them. The technician sat outside and took scrupulous notes.
At that point I was free to go back to the locker room and change. It was the most efficient yet impersonal experience I had had at the doctors. I didn't want to give up my arm band because I actually liked how it looked.