More stories for my grandchildren...

Today was interesting and hilarious and painful and fun and awful and exhausting.

Wow - I didn't know one day could have that many adjectives.

This week on Tuesday I started my school's English camp, which consists of me teaching 3 classes a day by myself from 10-1. It has been such a nice break!! I know my kids, I know their strengths and their weaknesses, and I know which ones I have to send to the back of the room to do worksheets (Mikey). And I can finally have fun with them! NO SET CURRICULUM!!! WOOOHOOO!!! My 6th grade class is my favorite - most of my after-school kids from last semester (Emily, Grace, Kim Hey Won, Chan-ul and Sarah) are in this class, plus a few more good ones. I don't want to think about saying goodbye to them come February...

But anyway...the stress level in my life has been significantly decreased - and I'm loving teaching again.

So today I was feeling a bit under the weather (as I've felt ever since that TGIFriday's incident), and as it turned out I had an appointment for an endoscopy after school. I learned a lot from the last hospital visit, and arranged to have someone from church to translate for me - my church is so good to me. Also, Hil and Jess Crew decided they should accompany me (which was so sweet of them to do). I have a hard time admitting I would like other people there to be with me, so its a good thing that they insisted :)

Hil thought it was funny that I even thought about going without her. As if I had a choice, as she pointed out.

So we get to the hospital, and the DOCTOR SPEAKS ENGLISH!!! Well, he speaks some, but enough to ease my mind. God is soooo good!!! Laura, the woman from church who came to translate, was relieved that he spoke English, because her knowledge of medical terminology is not extensive (which is completely understandable because she's not a doctor).

So if you're clueless as to what an endoscopy is, here's a brief overview:

The doctor numbs your throat and slides a long tube with a camera on the end down your esophagus and into your stomach. He takes a look around and notes anything unusual, possibly removing suspicious-looking tissue if he finds any. The whole procedure takes about 5 minutes.

So he asks if I want to be knocked out for the procedure (as it turns out, most people choose this option). If you know me (or any of my maternal family members) you'll know that we don't believe in excessive measures to provide "comfort" during medical procedures, whether that be epidurals, anesthetic, or anything that keeps us from being completely lucid for any measure of time. I think my mom took 2 ibuprofen tablets when she gave birth to me.

So no, I did not want to be knocked out...I don't want to spend hours in recovery, I don't want any extra chemicals running through my body, so you can stop pushing your drugs on me Mr. Dr. Drug-Pusher. I need them not, thank you.

Then he asks me if I want to be sedated for the procedure. Look, dude - just spray the back of my throat and throw that camera down my gullet. I don't want your "happy pills" and I don't want your "sleepy drugs" would you JUST get STARTED ALREADY???

He gives me a chuckle and says something in Korean that I'll tell you later...

So I gargle this potent numbing solution for a minute, trying not to choke (as Hil tries to break my concentration by making me laugh...jerk). Then I go into a dark room, lay down on my side, and they put a plastic mouth-opener thing (medical term) in my mouth to keep me from biting the nurses or something. And then the camera goes in.

It is important to note at this point that the camera-tubey thing is approximately the width of a finger. And the tube is not extraordinarily flexible, as Wikipedia had informed me it would be.

In fact, it kind of caught the side of my throat going down and scraped for a bit as I screamed silently with panicked eyes. And I can't say anything because of that plastic mouth-opener. And even if I could, I don't know how to say "OKAY I CHANGED MY MIND I NEED THE SEDATIVE NOW" in Korean. But it kept going down.

Now, at this point I can breathe, but when I breathe, air not only goes into my lungs, but it goes into my stomach too. So every time the doctor moves the camera, air shifts around, causing me to wretch slightly and burp ever so eloquently.

I don't know if you'll ever understand this experience without actually having it done. It was like being strangled from the inside. My eyes were squished shut for the whole procedure, the whole of my energy being concentrated into not freaking out. About halfway through the procedure, I felt a comfort come over me and its weird, but I felt this warmth around me...and I stopped wretching, and I relaxed, and I thought "I will be fine and this will be over soon." And as that thought crossed my mind, the camera came out.

I burped a few more times, stood up, wiped the tears from my eyes and THANKED GOD that it was over. I opened the curtain and saw Hil and Jess and said,

"BUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUHHHHHHHHHHHHH".

It was the longest burp on record. But I did say "Excuse Me". If I would've been in the right mind, I would've quoted the movie "Elf" and said "Did you hear that?!?!"

So the doctor said he saw a lot of inflammation (gastritis) and a he found a few lesions that he removed and was going to take a look at under his handy-dandy microscope. I said thank you many times and he took off.

Later Laura told me that when I told him that I didn't want sedation or anesthetic, he said that he was surprised and thought that maybe I was a little crazy.

At this point, I will have to concur.