Byeongwon

I've been going to Severance Hospital twice a week. It's the hospital attached to Yonsei University, and it is less than a ten-minute walk from our place.

The reason I've been going is because of the mallet finger injury I suffered back in July in America. (In mallet finger, the tendon that attaches to the last finger joint separates from the bone; as a result, the joint flops over and can't be straightened. The treatment is to splint the finger straight for at least six weeks and let the tendon re-attach to the bone.)

The first picture was taken the morning after the injury, before the fingers were splinted. The second was taken the day the splints were removed. The third was taken today. The fingers look pretty straight in the middle picture, but that's largely because they were frozen into that position by the splints and stiff as boards. As they loosened up, they also started to flop over more. I left for Korea right about when I should have been starting a program of physical therapy to restore strength, range of motion, and a normal appearance to the fingers.

So, after I was here a couple of weeks, I decided to see if I could find a therapist at Severance. The hospital completed a brand-new, state-of-the-art building in 2005 that is clean, modern, and very high-tech. There is an International Health Care Center in it that caters to foreigners and has staff speaking English and other foreign languages. For simple treatment the Center doctors can take care of you themselves; for more specialized treatment, the Center acts as a liaison to the rest of the hospital helping you schedule appointments and communicate with doctors and staff.

Through the Center we set up an appointment with a doctor, and he recommended that I get paraffin wax baths for the hand and see a physical therapist. Before each appointment I'd go to the International Health Care Center, they'd charge my credit card, and walk me over to the right place for my appointment.

After a while I realized that they were charging me $30 a visit for this service. So, with Erma's help, I started using the hospital's services directly. Since the appointments were all already set up, it turned out to be pretty simple. I even have my own Severance Hospital patient card now!

Each paraffin wax treatment costs about $15. It involves sticking my hand in and out of a hot vat of molten wax, letting the layers congeal around the hand. This seems pretty low-tech, but it's a great way of permeating the fingers with long-lasting, even warmth to loosen up the tissues and make them flexible. (If I remembered more from high school chemistry and physics I could perhaps claim that it has something to do with the specific heat, but I don't.)


My hand gets bigger and bigger, and smoother and more doughy-looking, with each immersion. It's actually quite comfortable, even soothing.


No matter how many layers of wax go on, though, my monkey-knuckle-hair shows throw black as ink.

The therapist uses a spoon to scrape off the wax, and then we repeat the whole process two more times.


Seeing the physical therapist costs about another $15. She taught me how to do little strength-and-flexibility exercises that I can practice at home and at school multiple times a day. Here I'm extending one of the injured fingers back against pressure from her fingertip.


The fingers are definitely getting stronger, but I'm not sure they'll ever fully straighten out.

From what I've seen of this hospital and the staff, I'd feel pretty comfortable getting treated here for a major trauma or injury.