Just a quick note to say I’m back home.

After 10 days of IV antibiotics the doctor judged my chest sufficiently better enough to let me go.  That’s not to say everything is hunky dory.  I have to go back on Thursday for a follow up.  Hopefully my lungs will behave and have improved even more.

I swear if I see a tray with rice, soup and kimchi on it any time soon, I’ll scream.  Ten days times three meals a day is a heck of a lot of rice.

I was doing a lot better by Sunday afternoon.  My cough had pretty much gone away and I was sleeping a lot better.  By Monday evening, I was back to square one.

I think a big part of it is all the dust from the renovations at the school. I can smell something odd on the first floor where they’re doing a lot of sanding of the plaster.

So the doctor (a different one) upon hearing my hacking cough (and me possibly blowing out his ear drums by coughing while he had the stethoscope in his ears) ordered a chest x-ray.

It came back and all he said is that he saw non-specific changes on the x-ray.  To me, that doesn’t sound particularly good.  But I was relieved to know I didn’t have pneumonia or anything like that.

So he sent me to the infusion clinic for IV steroids and antibiotics.  I sat there for an hour or so with the IV in just reading a magazine (Scientific American, if you’re interested).  He then wrote me a prescription for more of what the last doctor prescribed, but with a higher dosage and longer course of steroids.

So I’m back to bouncing around between nasty, loopy and wired.  On top of it, my stomach is killing me.  I’m not a happy camper right now.

Luckily, the kindergarteners are off at a camp for one more day.  So I don’t have anything until 12:50 tomorrow, and that’s just a meeting.

We had some thunderstorms roll through the area a few hours ago. It went from pretty close to 100F to 70F.

The storms were pretty nasty with a lot of lightening and thunder and heavy rains. I shut down the computers and disconnected the DSL modem and router. I’m not much into frying them for no good reason.

I opened up the sliding door on my balcony and let the cool air in. It’s still raining off and on. I might just take a walk in the rain and grab some dinner from the Kimbob restaurant.

Yesterday I went to Lotte Mart to finally do some grocery shopping and buy some much needed things for my apartment (a wireless router being the primary one). With two large pillows and three bags of groceries and my bag full of work stuff and my purse, I wasn’t eager to walk the mile back to my apartment. So I caught a cab.

Now I have had extensive experience with the cab drivers in Yangsan, where I lived the last time. They generally drove like nuts, but I never feared for my life. Last night, I really thought I was going to die.

It seems like the little things we take for granted in the US don’t apply here. You know, the small things, like stopping for red lights and not driving the wrong way down one way streets.

The part of Ulsan I live in is dominated by one major road and tons of one way back streets. I live and work on one such street.

So this cab driver last night did a u-turn onto that very large, very busy road.  Then he turned left on red.  Then he started weaving through the back streets going way faster than I ever would (and I’m not known for driving particularly slow).

I’m sure this cab driver is a very nice man.  But I think I’ll pass out if I ever see him again. I was shaking so badly, I could barely get out of the cab and into the apartment building.

I was struggling to get all of my stuff up three flights of steps.  A nice gentleman who lived on the second floor saw me struggling up the steps and took pity on me.  He carried all of my stuff from Lotte Mart up to my apartment for me and brought it into the kitchen (thank goodness it was clean, LOL).  I must have said thank you about twenty times.