Our Summer Update

Who would have thought a pair of crutches would be our best friend?

Hi, everyone

We thought we better let you know what had happened to us and update our condition. Well…, as some of you know, we were in the process of moving back to U.S, and in the meantime with summer break we were enjoying our vacation in Korea throughout July with our family. But it turns out that we have to rely on these crutches for the next few months. Here is the story.

July 12th, Friday

We took our family and our nephew to ride ATV (All-Terrain Vehicle) in Gangwon province which is on the east coast of Korea. It was raining a little but still good enough to enjoy the outdoor on the hilly rural area of beautiful east coast.

The first 30 minute ride was great and we were having fun. Then we were heading to more slopped rocky area to challenge. Our ATV slipped off on a ditch, and we sprang out from the vehicle and fell off like a rag doll on the ground. We landed on our left side of hip hard.

‘Uh-oh, this is not good…’ we knew right away something bad happened to our leg because we felt excruciating pain on our left thigh. The pain was unbearable and we couldn’t even get myself up. Luckily our husband was right behind us and saw the whole accident.

We were shipped to the local emergency and took an X-ray. They found the fractures on our femur bone below the hip joint. The local doctor said that we needed a surgery soon and recommended to go to a bigger hospital in Seoul. We had to arrange a private ambulance to ship us and our families to Seoul. It was getting darker and the rain was getting heavier. With Friday evening traffic, it took 2 hours to reach to our designated hospital – the Severance hospital in Seoul. Our young son thought it was so cool to see all the vehicles on the road were making a way for us to pass. Even with a pain killer we were in misery especially when the ambulance was hitting on all the bumps and turns on the road.

We arrived in Seoul late night and went through more tests and X-rays. The diagnose was “Intertrochanter fracture”. There were fractures below the hip joint on the the top of femur bone. The resident doctor came and explained the injury and the types of surgery we needed. The surgery was scheduled to be on the next morning. We don’t even remember how we spent the night.

July 13th, Saturday

10 am. They took us to the operation room and injected epidural on our spine to make our legs numb. We finally met the orthopedic surgeon – Dr. Yang. He briefly explained what he is gonna do with the surgery.

“Please, do your best so that we will walk with our two legs again!”. We asked him.

“Of course you will.” He smiled and affirmed us that everything will be alright.

The operation began and the doctor inserted titanium rods and screws on our femur. The surgery went for 2-1/2 hours and we were awake most of the time. Yes, we heard the sound of drilling when the doctor was inserting the screws on our bone! Listening to the horrific sound of someone inserting metal rods and screws to our leg in a cold operation room was something we will never forget rest of our life. We felt extremely cold and they piled up more blankets on our torso.

We prayed. Prayer has an immense power to bring peace to one’s mind. It always has been a source to gain strength when we need. And it became a way to express our gratitude for what we are blessed with. We believe that humble and sincere prayers do bring personal inspirations.

What was our inspirations? Well, the first thought came to our mind was that we would totally be destined to get caught at metal detectors in every airport. You gotta have some humor even during your lowest moment. Right? But throughout all the ordeal, we had a comforting feeling that we would be okay. And we consider myself lucky to have accident like this happened in Korean where we could get a quality medical service.

The surgery was successful according to doctor and we spent the next 4 days in the hospital. Our poor husband, who came to Korea to spend 1 week of his vacation, had to spend most of his time on our bedside. 🙁

July 14th, Sunday

Since our body was linked with so much of medicines (pain killers, antibiotics, etc), we were drowsy most time and we couldn’t eat as much as we should. However the hospital care and the medical service was great.

Dr. Yang visited us every morning leading a dozen of his residents and intern doctors – quite usual scene in large Korean hospitals.

July 14th-16th

We guess the knee surgery is considered as the most painful one to recover of all the surgeries.

We shared the hospital room with an 80-year-old lady who just had a knee surgery. She was in a great pain and whining every moment we can remember. In fact the most people in the hospital ward we were staying were the elderly. Some had hip surgeries, some spine, and some knees. One lady told us that we look too young to have a hip joint surgery without knowing what had happened to us.

Seeing these elderly people suffering from their injuries or illnesses caused by old age made us ponder of the later stages of our lives. No one can avoid from getting old, and your body will deteriorate as you get older. We think we gained a great deal of understanding and compassion to elderly people. Taking care of our health and our body while we are young is extremely crucial to obtain better life in the later stage.

We were encouraged to move around with crutches but every move we made we felt so much pain especially with sitting up and down.

July 17th-23rd

We left hospital and stayed in a hotel with our family to recover more before flying to U.S.

Spending most of time either on the couches or on the bed, we became THE couch potato. We think we've watched more Korean TV shows in this week than we did in our entire life.

First few days, walking was painful even with crutches. We tried many different types of pain killers that doctor prescribed but none seemed to work except they made us drowsy. We had to get self-injected blood clot shots for 10 days (with a help of our husband). We had a visiting nurse checking on us every few days to sterilize our wound and make sure it didn’t get any infection.

We think the worst part was that we were not allowed to take a shower for 10 days to avoid any possible infection caused by water. Please, don’t try to imagine how we would look. We felt extremely gross. We had our husband wipe our body with a damp clothe, but our hair? Luckily our hotel was a serviced apartment so there was a kitchen sink. We managed to wash our hair like we would wash the Korean noodles.

Because of our unexpected accident, we had to make many changes to our family’s summer plan. Our initial plan of traveling around many places of Korea and taste the local foods (and we were going to blog about it… ) had been cancelled. It will be a few more years for us to get another chance to travel in Korea. What a bummer!! We are sad. Very sad. 🙁

July 24th

Our families and we flew from Seoul to Denver. We are so glad that we didn’t pass out. We lied down and slept most time.

July 25th-August 13th

We are staying in our in-laws in the suburban area of Denver.

The pain is subsiding slowly and we can handle about 50% weight bearing on our left leg with a help of crutches. We have seen the orthopedic doctor here and he said we might need at least 12 weeks not only for the fractured bones but also the damaged muscle tissues and ligaments to heal. It has been 4 weeks since our surgery, which means we have 8 more weeks to go, at least. Arrrrgh!!!

According to our research, this type injury might take 3-6 month to heal, and some even needs 1 year to recover fully to go back to normal everyday life. Thinking about the whole recovery process plus being a couch potato myself at this moment is not exciting at all.

Please, allow this quirky petite middle aged Korean lady to be depressed for a moment.

Okay, we are done feeling blue…

Denver is great. We always have loved this beautiful place. The air, the mountain, and the food (especially the Mexican food)… “Me guesta la comida Mexicana!!!”

As we are sitting in front of the computer to recall the past one month of our unfortunate event, we see many birds flying outside of the window. They all come down to feed themselves on the bird houses and bird baths in the neighbor’s yard. We so envy these birdies right now. Being able to move your body freely is a precious gift that we should be thankful for.

We are praying that we will get on our two feet on the ground again soon and do the things we do without the pain and the discomfort. The time will come eventually. We just have to be patient and be active. Hopefully we will be able to go pick some apples and patch some pumpkins with our kids in the fall. We are crossing our fingers!

We will try to post some pictures we took in Korea next time, if we can manage. We hope you all are having a great summer and getting ready for a beautiful fall.

Take care!