My parents had been before, and wanted to go back to see the turning of the Autumn colour and to stay again and the wonderfully located Kensington hotel.
However, this years trip was unexpectedly cut short, My mum fell whilst relaxing on a rock at a waterfall and broke her ankle in 3 places, there was quite an adventure following the accident to get back to Gyeonggi-do and to get some treatment... 12 hours to get back, 3 hospitals, 3 days wait for the operation and we are now looking at 2 weeks recovery and possibly 5 days longer in hospital than their expected time remaining in Korea.
The operation (on Monday) seems to have been successful and physio has started.
Korean hospital are very different from those in the west,although the medical care and procedures are the same, buildings, methods and expectations are different...
One example is that nurses and medical staff will do the Medical care, relatives are supposed to take care of all other types of care, such as helping the patient to the bathroom, getting to the treatment rooms etc.
Buildings can be different, we first arrived at the SNU hospital in Bundang, the ER was much the same as anywhere in the world; busy, noisy, not enough beds, not enough doctors - although I can't say I have ever seen a dead body (covered) being pushed past a room full of people awaiting treatment, before.
The Suji Ho Hospital is quite different, a smaller specialist (bone / joint) hospital in a korean style square concrete retail building that houses the usual mix of car parking, pharmacy, restaurants, coffee shops and other mysterious outlets on floors B3 to 3 and the hospital wards, administration, reception, treatment, x-ray and scanning, operating theatres and a roof garden floors 4 to 7. I also saw a wonderfully grammatically incorrect sign warn patients preparing to undergo an MRI scan that they "...should be aware of the metallic in your pants".
Various rooms are available V.I.P., private room, 3 patient room, 5 patient room and as many patients as we can fit beds in rooms at a nightly cost of between 30,000 ~ 150,000 Won. The patients are equally broad in their variety... 박, 성경 an elderly but famous actor, elderly men and women, middle aged men and women, foreign Asian and my parents adding to the mix and providing a no doubt unusual white foreign representation.
All hospitals and treatment in Korea is private and has to be paid for before being discharged.
I am happy to say that although uncomfortable, the patient is recovering well...
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