Life can be a real pain in the neck sometimes.  Like these past 3 days for instance.  I mean, over the years I’ve had my share of what my father used to call “a crick in the neck” but I don’t recall anything quite like this.  The pain is excruciating but what is really weird is that while I have some side-to-side restricted motion, it’s the up-and-down that hurts the most.  I’ve been putting heat on the neck which seems to help and I slept without a pillow last night as well.  And of course I’m refraining from nodding my head in agreement.  Yep, I’m just one big old disagreeable bastard lately.

Anyway, we did our hike up to the Doseon temple yesterday and while Jee Yeun was enjoying her lunch her phone rings.  She talks awhile in her native tongue, hangs up, and matter-of-factly advises me that the hospital where we did our physical exams last week had been reviewing the results and discovered that the 3-D image of my heart reveals a 50% blockage in one of my arteries.  They wanted to know if I could make it in to visit a doctor prior to my scheduled appointment with the hilarious Dr. Yu on the 24th.  Well.

Honestly, I’ve been sweating out the results of my physical a bit given that I experience a fair amount of discomfort surrounding my internal organs.  I don’t think a heart blockage would be the cause of that.  So, if this is my worst result I’ll consider myself lucky.  I don’t know if that’s the case though–have they checked the chest x-ray yet?  What about the biopsy they did on the sample from my stomach?  Or the ultrasound of those painful organs?  I’ll admit I was a little disconcerted that the hospital apparently thought I shouldn’t wait another week to see Dr. Yu.  So, I’m going back to Soonchunhwang tomorrow morning to see what’s up.  I’m supposedly going to be meeting with an English-speaking doctor as well, so there’s that.

Of course, I’ve scoured the internets to bone up on coronary artery disease.  Kills more people in the USA than any other malady and 13 million folks suffer its affects in varying degrees.  The good news is that a 50% blockage doesn’t normally require surgery–it’s treated with medication, diet and exercise.  I’m actually disappointed though because my previous exam two years ago showed a 30% blockage and I’ve been working the diet and exercise routine for over a year now–apparently without positive results.  But if the normal treatment is to put me on Lipitor or some other atorvastatin drug I don’t get the urgency to see me prior to my scheduled appointment one week later.  Perhaps it’s just an overabundance of caution on their part.  Which is the same reason I’m going in the morning.  Plus I don’t want to worry about this for another week.

Looks like I picked a bad time to restart watching episodes of House…