Sick

Well, the day I have been dreading has finally come. Despite the handful of vitamins I take on a daily basis, I'm sick.

For the past month or so, I've been watching several of my friends drop like flies, spend their afternoons, feverish at the doctor's office, lose their voices and cough up buckets of phlegm. Ignorantly believing I was, in some way, untouchable, I've continued to wear my body out in every form imaginable, all the time in close proximity to those affected, preaching the gospel of vitamins to them.

This morning I woke up, shivering, and could barely lift my head. There was a searing pain shooting through my skull, knives in my throat and a wet, disgusting cough. My eyelids were so heavy that it seemed my body was screaming at me to stay in bed. For the first time ever, I was lulled to sleep on the bus ride to school (the same ride that usually makes me fear for my life on a daily basis due to the bus driver's insane maneuvering).

I'm one of them now. Well, too bad. "Sick days" in Korea are virtually non-existent; they are indeed written into my contract, though, if I'm sick, I must first come to school (an hour long trip) and let my co-teacher decide if I am indeed too sick to work. Today when I came in, she said, "Mandi, you are sick?" When I meekly replied, "Yes," she told me she would take me to the clinic tomorrow after school, then swiftly moved on to discussing today's schedule. The clinic.  I hear stories of what happens in the clinic. Bloodletting, strange unnecessary injections, hell, my friend Eve went in recently for the same thing, wet cough/sore throat, and the doctors diagnosed her with allergies. Weird.

More soon, (if I survive!)
M