Month: April 2024

Near death

Long ago, in the 1980s, when we visited community pediatric centers, the first thing for a nurse to do was to put a thermometer under armpit (axillary). Also, sometimes, nurses measured my body temperature from under my tongue. I do not know exactly when we started using forehead scanners at home, but when my first daughter was born, I obtained a scanner type thermometer, and we are still using it. In Korea, we use the measure unit °C, instead of °F in the USA. The average normal body temperature is 36 °C. When the temporal forehead scanner indicates over 38 °C, I use acetaminophen (Tylenol) and ibuprofen (usually Motrin) at over 8-hour intervals. My family members respond well to Tylenol, but we use two different medicines alternately because the liver might need more time to recover. I also like watery handkerchiefs and cooling sheets (hydrogel patches, easy to get in Korea) for my kids.

Maybe you know that a high fever could damage our organs. Maybe you hear that someone becomes deaf after a high fever, or even death. One of my friends lost his voice with fever. I had been sick with high fevers (over 38 °C) when I was in the first grade of elementary school, maybe for a whole winter break. I recovered a week (or three days) before the second grade started from my deadly fever. What I remember now is that I was hospitalized for one month. I used a very big personal room with two beds. I used one bed and another bed, which mom usually occupied. I got a lot of presents from relatives and friends. I had IV injections all the time that they called Ringel. I do not know exactly what Ringel is. I thought that IV was Ringel, but maybe not really. I just guess now that Ringer IV was just helping with anti-dehydration and/or anti-inflammation agents. I also sometimes got nutrient IV because I could not eat normal foods and I could not have normal bowel movement. Fever made me eat and poop like a baby or less than an infant. I liked Cerelac (baby food power) more than any other Korean Juk (porridge). Nurses really wanted to check my poops all the time. Fever really made me hard to poop. I remember poop was like rabbit poops, maybe due to dehydration. However, my memory is not bad. Maybe I was too young to know about death. I was too busy to think of death and sickness. I enjoyed my hospitalization because I had a lot of new toys and I met a friend (a daughter from the hospital owner or related persons??, maybe a doctor’s daughter, I guess). I do not know her well except that she was a similar aged girl, because I never met her again after my release. I even missed her and the hospital because I hoped to see her again. She showed me here and there – the complexity of hospital, a long hallway, shortcuts – and even led me to the hospital rooftop (the top of four-story building). She once took some fancy bandages and syringes, and we played doctor and patient. I do not know which diseases I had. I heard doctors did not know what I had.

One day, my fever seemed to be going up, because I heard that a nurse who visited me in the morning, yelled, “Alcohol pad, high fever.” Suddenly, all the nurses and doctors came to me, and mom and dad were there together. At the moment, I could not speak out, but when an alcohol pad (a very big and orange rubber bag, if my memory is right) rubbed me, I bad-mouthed in my thought, “Who said that nurses are White Angels, They are not good”. The alcohol pad was really freezing and a pain in itself to me.

Suddenly, I felt my room whirling to me like water in a funnel, and all sounds in my room overwhelmed me, and I saw a bright light (maybe my brain works something ??); light is not a single object, just the room was full with Brightness. and I heard me shouting a Buddha’s name, “Gwansembosal”. I do not know why I shouted. Actually, shouting was a shame to me, and I was surprised with my shouting, and they (doctors and nurses) were also surprised of my shouting “Gwansembosal”. Google translator is saying that “Gwansembosal” in Korean is “Avalokitesvara Bodhisattva”. In Korea, Gwansembosal is the best of the Buddhas that I heard from my grandma. I was a kid who loved Buddha Kid story books published by Buddha temples. After my shouting or seeing Light, like a lie, my fever had gone, and 3 days later, I was released from a hospital (the hospital name was Chunchon Jail Hospital). I thought that I was unLuck because I should return to school without any absence, because I was recovered just on time. I remember when I had the first shower at home, it was a big deal to whole family members. They were all concerned and checked the bath temperature and the air temperature. When I recovered, I missed my baby food, so I teased mom and got a new baby food can, but when I got them, it was not yummy any more, even yucky. So I know that our body knows what we need sometimes automatically based on our conditions. I heard that I was lucky because my high fever did not damage any part of my body and even my mind. This might be my first Near-Death story when I was in the first grade of elementary school.

What I wanted to tell was not my fever story,…is the below!!