New Vocabulary

Today's word is 다행하다 (da-haeng-ha-da). To be lucky or fortunate. I learned it from the doctor the other day.

Turns out there was nothing on the x-ray, but the doctor wanted to do an MRI to see if there was any damage to the cartilage, or meniscus, in the knee which is what stops bone from grinding on bone. That would definitely not be a good thing since I still consider myself fairly active and plan to use my knees for a while yet. I realized it would probably be the right thing to do. But of course I was hesitant due to the cost- 400,000 Won (about US$ 400). What if I spend the money and find out there is no problem. Is that money wasted or money well spent?

I figured I might as well get the MRI. I've never had an MRI before, so if nothing else, at least it would be a new experience. But I have to tell you, as far as new experiences go, an MRI is a rather expensive and boring one. I was hoping they would scan my body from waist to shins. That way they might be able to find out about the lower back problems I have sometimes. Or at least they could scan my legs and get both knees in the picture. My right knee is the one that has problems sometimes (the left one was injured in the accident). But no, they placed the left knee in a special form to raise it up and just scanned that for thirty minutes or so. I didn't slide in and out of the ring or anything. I just lay there as the machine made a lot of noise.

For a moment I was wondering if a person could actually feel or be affected by the magnetism. I swear I felt a tingle or twinge in my other knee, in the blood veins or something, maybe. I had headphones to block out some of the noise, but the machine was still pretty loud. Even so, it was so boring, I almost fell asleep. Finally it was finished and I was able to get up. The technician told me that was it and then said something else I wasn't to sure about. Now what? Could I go home? Was I supposed to wait? If so, where should I wait? I figured since I didn't have anything else to do that day I might as well wait for a while. I went back to were the orthopaedic patients waited, sat down, and waited. And waited, and waited. Just when I was about to go home, one of the nurses came out, recognized me (not hard considering I was the only foreigner there) and told me it would be about another hour for the doctor to assemble and look at the data. Ok, so I waited some more.

Eventually they called me into the examining room and the doctor told me what was, or wasn't in the image. I didn't understand everything, but I understood that there were no problems. And he told me I had been lucky. He doesn't know how right he is. The accident could have been a lot worse. Luckily nothing was broken. Luckily I didn't loose much skin. Luckily I didn't land on my head (or my camera). And luckily there were no other cars in my lane when the accident happened.

I may have been lucky considering the outcome of that particular incident incident, but it was pretty unlucky to actually have the accident. All in all I would say that things have been rather unlucky for me for a while. Last year it was the broken foot. Before that there have been some other events- going back about three or four years. Life hasn't been too good to me for a while now. Perhaps I walked under a ladder, a black cat crossed my path, or maybe I broke a mirror a while ago. Who knows why things have been going the way they have. I just hope this run of bad luck ends sooner than later. I am not superstitious, but if it was a mirror I broke there could be up to another three years of bad luck left to go. Wish me good luck. I need it.

I don't have any pictures from the MRI. I was too busy trying to understand what the doctor was saying; I didn't have time to try and ask for copies. I know a log blog post can be boring, so here is a picture of the snow we had a few weeks ago. It wasn't much, but it was enough to make things pretty for a while.