너무 아아아아파*

* = I'm really hurt (nuh-moo ah-pah); from T-Ara's "내가 너무 아파"; funnily enough, the word for "to be sick" in Korean, 아프다, can also mean "to be hurt," although there is a separate verb for that.  See if you can figure out which one I meant after you finish reading.

Admittedly, I had truly not intended to post until I'd set foot on Korean soil once again (I'm not a compulsive blogger, I swear).  But the events of the past 24 hours are just too...um...ridiculous to not document adequately.

So first, let's get some facts straight about the past week:
- I have a sinus infection.  I managed to develop this the night before Class Day, which was awesome.  I had to be dragged to DUH twice by some very patient friends, and was finally given antibiotics as treatment after my visit on the evening of my Commencement.  Yay for graduating in a sinus pressure-induced haze!
- I managed to develop this sinus infection after a month of chronic coughing and blowing my nose.  Was it a cold?  Was it allergies?  Was it belated swine flu (unlikely; if you read my last posts of the summer and take note of the cold I claimed to have in my last week of classes, you will be delighted, I'm sure, to learn that I figured out after the fact that it was 90% swine flu)?  I have no idea, since I never went to the doctor to get it checked out.
- I like sushi and fish and eat it a couple of times a month if my budget allows.  Why, I had Miya's just last week.

Now let's start with last night.
Illin' with this stupid sinus infection, I've had such bad congestion that I haven't been able to taste or smell anything in about 4 days.  But my dad wanted to make me food that I like in my last couple of days home, and so last night he made me shrimp with cous cous.  I couldn't taste a thing, but I ate all of it (I mean, I was hungry).  And about 10 minutes after we finished dinner, I started feeling...itchy.  And hot.  And not...right.  I asked my dad if he'd put anything different or funny in the shrimp, and he looked at me kind of oddly, and then called me an invalid (my family may not have the most patience for sick people).  It was at this point, I think, that my brother noticed that my face was breaking out in hives, and all of a sudden, I started noticing certain parts of my body going numb.  I felt it first in my hands, which were starting to swell and redden; then it began to spread to my face, particularly my mouth.  Realizing that this was very, very wrong, I said I wanted to go to the ER.  My dad threw me into the car and sped towards our local hospital, which is conveniently only five minutes away.  After stumbling around the parking lot like an insane person while trying to find the entrance (my dad unceremoniously dumped me off at the ambulance entrance to go find parking), an ambulance driver took pity on me and ushered me inside, where I was immediately taken in (I must have looked like death warmed over, but I think they also saw right away that I was having a life-threatening reaction; more on that later) and put on a hospital bed.  By this point, my throat had started to close up and I couldn't feel my lips anymore.  Awesome!

I didn't watch any of this because I dislike nothing more than watching needles go into flesh (as a sidenote, I have six ear piercings), but I imagine the nurse had some terrible trouble finding a vein in my arm, because today my left arm is in considerable pain; my dad also told me that they took a lot of blood out of me.  It was my first time in the ER, and it was literally as insane as any television show portrays it - nurses swarming around me, rushing in various IV drips and poking and prodding me in a thousand places.  Anyway, the end result was the I was started on somewhere between 4-6 IV drips - the ones I can remember were some kind of steroid for swelling, epinephrine to treat the allergic reaction, benadryl, some anti-nausea drip, and andrenalin.  Funnily enough, while they were sticking all of this shit in me, I started whining in Korean (I kept saying, "아파, 아파," meaning it hurts, it hurts).  Why?  I have no idea.  I was fairly cognizant throughout the entire ordeal (despite everything that was happening to my body, my blood pressure and heart rate were fairly stable, for which I am grateful).  I think I really wanted to whine and cry, but in front of my dad (who actually was crying), I wanted to show a stronger face.  Nobody understands Korean, so I could whine like a little kid and go undetected.

So what happened to me?  The short is that my body suffered an allergic reaction and went into anaphylactic shock.  Because of all the medication in me at the time of reaction, plus the enduring month-long sickness-turned-sinus infection, it is difficult to point to a culprit with 100% surety, but the fact remains that this all transpired within 10-15 minutes of consuming shrimp.  Which means that I have developed (in less than a week, I'd have to say, since I had crab like, last Wednesday) a potential allergy to shellfish, rendering me unable to consume (at least until I have seen an allergist and figured out for sure if I have this allergy) shrimp, squid, clam, crab, lobster, oyster, octopus, mussels, and a whole other host of things that I have seen listed on websites that I don't feel like looking up now.

I honestly had enough things to worry about in going to Korea for one year (getting an apartment, getting a foreigner's registration card, a bank account, a cell phone contract, getting some tutoring jobs to make some extra change, and OH YEAH going to school full time and LEARNING KOREAN), but now we get to add a new and perpetual challenge to the list: navigating Korean cuisine whilst completely avoiding shellfish!

I started making a list of things that were probably safe to eat (my favorite dinner stew, a beef soup called 뚝배기 불고기, thank God, is still okay), but in the end, I just have to be super, super, super cautious, I think, especially when eating out.  While I can certainly order things that do not contain fish, there is a decent risk of cross contamination in dishes.  Then there's the problem of me staying with Jung Min Unni's family - a certainly did not want to be a burden, and now I come complete with a really annoying dietary restriction that is definitely going to affect how the Han family eats while I'm there (poor Unni's favorite food is octopus fried rice).  Then again, if they are understanding (which I hope they are, and I spoke to both Unni and her mom last night after I got home), it might actually save me a lot of trouble during the initial adjustment - eating at a home means that whoever is cooking, be it me, Unni, or Unni's mom, can absolutely control with certainty what goes into my food, and that's as safe as I could get.

Because the holiday weekend leaves me with only one business day before my departure, seeing an allergist before I leave the country will be all but impossible, so I'm making arrangements to see one ASAP in Korea.  That way, I can determine if shellfish really was to blame for this near-death experience.  Okay, so I would only have died if I had stayed at home for about an hour and done absolutely nothing, but still, it was absolutely terrifying and I would like never to repeat it again.

I now go to Korea armed with two EpiPens, a determination to avoid shellfish at all costs (even if it means I have to eat rice and gim until I have a better understanding of food preparation/what I can and can't eat), and a remarkable depression that comes with the realization that I can no longer have sushi (too high of a risk of cross-contamination on surfaces/knives) or ddeokbokki prepared with fishcake (because fishcake can sometimes be flavored with shellfish stock, and when you don't know for sure, it's best to err on the side of caution).  Sad face.

If anything, perhaps this will actually motivate me to learn to cook?  I know, a shocking admission from the former co-host of YTV's premier cooking show, Someday You'll Have a Kitchen.  I guess I'm a fraud.

post-script: I was in the emergency room for about 4 hours, after which I was discharged by what has got to be the biggest asshole male nurse in all of nursedom, who, every time he came in to check on my response to the IV drips, said in a sing-song voice, "You can't eat no shrimp no more!"  Thanks for the reminder, asshole!  I wanted to stick an IV needle in his eye.