“When do I get to punch the doctor in the face?”

People deal with pain in different ways. Apparently I deal with it through heavy breathing, singing theatre songs in my head, and grabbing at whatever mantra or reiki that flies my way. Today I got to use each and every one of those methods and have decided that heavy breathing works the best.

My knee has proven to be a constant struggle for me during tour. I’ve tried Tiger Balm and Icy Hot for five months…anything that might relieve the unstable and painful feeling that permeates through my knee brace whenever I put pressure on my bent leg…aka, whenever I dance…aka, every day. It has never completely incapacitated me, but given the opportunity to see a doctor here in Seoul (when we’re not traveling around for weeks at a time), I decided to take advantage.

Korean hospitals are nice. Apparently they are MUCH nicer than ones in China, though I luckily don’t have the expertise to make that comparison and am taking the word of our company manager who stood by me throughout my four hours at the hospital today while fighting the drowsy side-effects of the bronchitis medication she started taking after HER appointment this morning. Rose, our lovely assistant company manager and a native of Seoul, accompanied me as well, translating along the way as we ran into the occasional doctor who did not speak sufficient English. I was actually pleasantly surprised with the English.

X-rays went fine (eight in total) and I won’t bore you with specific diagnoses, but after a thorough exam by a resident and his “professor,” I was told to go to the sports injury rehab center on the 12th floor. Going up! The center was great; I was given stylish paper-thin black workout shorts to wear (hey, I was one of the few there NOT in printed hospital scrubs that tied on the back and sides of the legs…so I can’t really complain) as I hopped on the stationary bike for ten minutes then proceeded to get strapped into a contraption that measured muscle strength and pressure…or something like that. The handsome doctor showed me some specific exercises and then led me to the torture chamber…I mean doctor’s office.

It was here the doctor administered a relatively new treatment called ESWT (Extracorporeal Shock Wave Therapy), a treatment initially used to break up kidney stones but now utilized to help in the regeneration of stem cells and tendons in certain cases of tendonitis. Pretty cool stuff. On paper.

Imagine that sore spot on your body, you know, the one you went to the doctor for…now imagine someone taking a hammer and SLAMMING IT AGAINST THAT SORE SPOT 1,000 TIMES!!! I do not joke, my friends. The high-frequency ultrasonic waves emitted every second from the ESWT gun of death (as I have named it) not only sounded like someone banging a hammer onto a metal pipe but felt equally as abominable. I couldn’t believe that something like this could be good for you. After the first three sets of treatment, each sending out over 100 shocks into my incredibly sore patella, I asked Rose to stop flirting with the doctor and find out how much longer this was going to go on.

“You’ve done it 450 times…so only 550 left,” she translated through a smile in the way only a cute and shy Korean girl can. The next set was the worst and as I set out on a bout of heavy Billy Cosby-inspired Lamaze breathing, Rose reeled from my crushing her hand and whispered, “you’re almost there…just a little more…I can see the head!” That about did it for me. Had an ultrasonic Barbie jackhammer not been pummeling me at the time I may have decided to laugh, but stuck with the breathing instead.

After I sat up and wiped the sweat off of the doctor’s table, I surprised myself by still being able to stand after the fifteen minutes of bludgeoning administered to my patella, and followed Rose out of the office, whispering “can you ask when I get to punch the doctor in the face?” She did. He made some incomprehensible comment about dancing in my show and I decided to take it as a joke. We’ll see if I’m laughing about it when my entire knee is black and blue for a week. Amazing how far medicine has come these days.

Gotta’ run, though…I’ve gotta go tap dance for two hours!