Today in the Life of Watchy... MORE DOCTORS!

Seriously, this is getting tedious.  This particular doctor was a dermatologist, and I went to him because I've been getting these sores on my arm.  After one of them happened on a mole, I finally made the appointment as I've always heard that's the sort of thing where you want to be very sure it's just some minor problem.

So, first up, the International Clinic.  The last time I made an appointment through them, they never bothered to actually make the appointment with the doctor.  This time I made very sure they verified the appointment beforehand.  It took several emails and a phone call, but I got it verified.

Naturally, when I got to the hospital, they knew nothing of any dermatology appointment and thought I was there way too early for my next diabetes appointment, which isn't until November.

After negotiating this (with me channeling my grandmother, who was not all that nice about letting people know when they'd fucked up), I got myself taken down to the dermatology department, where I was told that since ten people had all made appointments with this guy at 9:30, I'd probably have to wait a bit.  So it's not just the International Clinic, then; the entire hospital isn't a hundred percent clear on what this "appointment" concept is really all about.

Once I finally got to the doctor, he seemed remarkably unconcerned by the whole thing and just said he'd give me medicine.  Feeling there was some information missing here, I pulled out my grandmother voice again and made him tell me what he thought the problem was (eczema) and what this "medicine" was actually going to be.  I didn't actually get any tests done, so the whole thing was a total waste of time.  Even the medicine is just something to treat sores and is completely unnecessary as they were never causing me any trouble to begin with; I just went to the doctor to rule out the dreaded cancer.

Then it was back up to the International Clinic, where they told me that for insurance purposes I needed a referral letter from another doctor to see the specialist I had just seen.  (This isn't abnormal at that kind of hospital in Korea.  However, you normally see the referring doctor first since, you know, it's a little pointless to be referred to a specialist you've already seen.)  Here I sat around in the waiting room for twenty minutes and then got dragged back to the payment desk and told the price for both doctors, the specialist I had seen and the family doctor who I can only assume was told to write a referral letter without ever looking at me.

All of this took two hours and I know as much as I did at the start.  I'm more annoyed that I wasted a morning than anything else.