CRASH!

Well, we knew it would happen eventually.... we've been in a car accident. We've referenced many times how crazy the drivers are here in Korea, and last night only proved it.

We were in a taxi last night with our friend Kristen. We were on our way to her house. We were in a taxi and not a bus because we had went shopping at Home Plus (the Wal-Mart of Korea) so we had many sacks and boxes and it was just easier to take a taxi. Well, we were almost to Kristen's apartment and our taxi driver was making a left turn, when all of a sudden another taxi came swerving around the corner, it's tires screeching, and slammed right into our taxi. Nice, huh. Shawn was sitting in the passenger side front seat of the car and had his seat belt on (what a good boy!). Stephanie was sitting directly behind him and Kristen was sitting behind the driver. These two girls did not have their seat belts on (naughty!) due to the fact that they had many sacks in their lap and a huge box sitting between them. I know, excuses excuses. Well, the other taxi slammed directly the back door of the passenger side, yep, that's right, right where Steph was sitting. Since there was a big box next to her, she flew into that, and that prevented her from hitting Kristen. Kristen, on the other hand, slammed into the door frame, and Shawn hit his head on the back of his seat. We were all pretty shook up, and very sore from the whiplash effect that happened. What a spectacle that accident scene was! Three foreigners in an accident, there were many spectators standing around. One even came up to us and pointed at our taxi driver and said, "bad driver!" Yeah, thanks buddy for that information.

After talking to some friends (one of them being a Korean doctor), they convinced us 3 to go to the hospital the next day to get everything checked out. The visit would be covered under the taxi driver's insurance. Since we're both nurses we were very interested in how this visit was going to turn out. We went and saw the doctor first and the first thing he asked us (before even figuring out what happened) was if we wanted to stay over night in the hospital. We were like, really? You don't even know what's wrong with us yet, and your asking if we want to stay overnight. That would never happen in America. Anyway, he finally did ask what was wrong. We told him (well our co-teacher translated for us) that we were in an accident and we both had pain in our necks and Steph in her back. He asked us to point to where, so we did. Then he sent us downstairs to get X-rays. We thought that was kind of odd. He didn't ask us anything else about the pain, just where it was. So we got Xrays of our necks and backs. Then we got sent back to the doctor. He looked at our Xrays and told us we have no broken bones (obviously, right?) and said it was just a muscle sprain. He then told Steph that she needed to get a shot of pain medication in her ass (can I say that word on here?). She adamantly refused that, to which the doctor just laughed. Next stop was physical therapy. They had us lay on a table with a hot pack under our necks for 20 minutes. Then they wanted to hook up a TENS unit to us. For those of you non-medical people out there, a TENS unit is a Transcutaneous Electrical Nerve Stimulator which basically means it uses electrical currents to help relieve pain. Google it if you want to learn more. Once again, Steph was adamantly refusing this treatment option, but the physical therapist said she had to, so she begrudgingly obliged. So, we were hooked up to some voltage and away we went! It felt very weird, and neither of us thought it did much good. Shawn even had a nice little visitor come over to him during his treatment. Yep, you guessed it, a cockroach. There are EVERYWHERE over here!

Well, needless to say, it's been an eventful 24 hours over here in Korea. Not to worry, we are both doing ok. They said the pain should subside in 1-2 weeks. Until then.......