So I was told to expect the biopsy results in a week, and duly accepted an appointment for the next Tuesday. Went into Seoul then and endured the divorce. All was on an even keel on Wednesday- a light teaching day in which I got precious little done, as usual.

Thursday, I had a PD day with the ESoL team, with whom I will be working in the new academic year. We were just putting our bags down in the conference room, when I had a call from the hospital:
H: Can you come in for your results this morning?
P: They're in already?
H: Yes, they came quickly.
P: Well, I'm supposed to be in meetings all day. Can I come Monday?
H: Uh, yes, that's ok.
P: Great; see you Monday.
Connie Kim (Vice Principal) Are you crazy?

So within fifteen minutes, I was in a taxi on the way to the hospital. Another fifteen minutes, I was back in front of the consultant who had told me two days previously that the edges of my tumour were 'irregular', which could mean cancer, and that the white flecks on the ultrasound were probably carcino-something-or-other, which could mean cancer.
Doctor: It's cancer.
P; Oh. Right.
Doctor; We need to discuss the treatment process now. You will need surgery and chemo and radiation and blah and blah and words and fuzz...
P: Um. Sorry, I'm just missing a bit there. It's a bit of a surprise.
Doctor: Why a surprise? I told you Tuesday you had cancer.
P: No, you told me it COULD be cancer!

I had been riding on the conditional. Mistake. Am an English teacher, and pedantic. Say what it is, people, not what it could be.

So he got a bit shirty with me when I suggested that I might want someone else to look at the results. I have been barraged by information and advice from the very beginning, all of which has been prefaced with 'get a second opinion'. Well, I don't NEED a second opinion to tell me that tumour ain't right. A trained monkey could look at the mammogram and ultrasound and say 'Oooh, that doesn't look good.' I know this. I am neither trained nor a monkey and it's exactly what I did. I have a tumour. It is cancerous.
What I really needed was some time to think about how treatment would play out. I don't want to go back to Canada for it- oh, for myriad reasons!- and I can't go back to the UK, as my residency status has expired. So Korea. But which hospital? Seoul? Incheon? Close to home, or close to Annie?
He was offended, though, clearly.

The reason was revealed in a later conversation with the woman at the International Clinic. She'd had many dealings with people from my school who had required hospital help, and was somewhat surprised when I said that I was planning on being treated in Korea. She said 'Why do foreigners not trust Korean doctors? Why do they always go home?'

I replied that I do not believe that it is because we don't trust Korean doctors (Though let's be honest- how much do we trust ANY doctor?) but because when we feel weak, we want to be somewhere familiar and where we can be surrounded by people we know. Natural to head for the home hearth. Natural for everybody but me, evidently.

So, the offended doctor ordered the MRI test, to be done the next day. I said that we would make any treatment decisions after the results of that came through, the following Tuesday. Otherwise, all plans were still in place: I was still fit and well; you know, OTHER than the great, festering tumour in my breast- and had things to do. There was a basketball tournament on Saturday in Jeju, and I was to be the female chaperone. I had company coming round on Friday, and very important take-out orders to be placed. Business as usual until the business has to stop, thank you very much.

The day of the MRI dawned clear and bright.
Actually, I can't remember how it dawned, I just wanted to set some sort of stage for the test. My friend Shelley was coming with me- she'd been there on the Tuesday,  laughing with me at the Korean soap opera on the telly and sharing a filthy Macdonalds meal afterwards. We were told that the test would take about half an hour. No. Not half an hour.

We wrangled with the lady at the International Clinic for a few minutes before going in. There were questions about insurance- having always been resident in lovely socialist countries before, where nationalised healthcare is a sign of civilisation, not a sign of an impending apocalypse (yes, that was a poke at conservatism. I'm sick. I'm allowed to poke.) the whole business was rather astonishing.
P: You mean the test won't go ahead if the company says I can't have it?
Cranky International Clinic lady: They need to confirm that they are paying for it.
P: How much will it cost if they don't confirm it before the test is supposed to start?
CICL: (pause, type, squint at the screen) About 10, 500, 000 won.  (Ten THOUSAND dollars)
P: Yikes.

Authorisation came, and down I went to the clinic. They gave me the very-nearly-too-small hospital issue clothes (Aside here- I am a Western woman, carrying about 20 extra pounds. In Korea, that is an XL. Sigh) and an injection. Something to make all the nasties show up under the MRI. Now, if I am not mistaken, this stands for Magnetic Resonance Imaging. Or something like that. I was assuming, therefore, that I had been injected with some kind of funky liquid metal that would allow the machine, like Magneto from the X-Men, to suck it back out of me and get a picture of what the problem was. Or, to turn it into a cool metal surfboard to allow it to escape from the high security prison cell where it had been held since the first film.

One's mind does odd things in the MRI machine.

The machine is exactly what it looks like on the telly: like a giant, metallic burrito. You lie down on the little platform, and it retracts into the tube, whereupon you are subjected to bells and bangs and whistles for an hour, while lying perfectly still. The noises are very loud, so they give you a set of headphones so you can listen to music while you wait. The music was English, with the exception of 'La Vie en Rose'. It also seemed to have been compiled by someone who did not actually SPEAK English, but had been tasked with finding music that would be soothing to the nervous cancer patient during this first stressful test. I say this because the playlist included things that a more, shall we say, FLUENT speaker might have recognised as unlikely to be in any way soothing at all. 'The Rose', for example, or- God help me, Simon and Garfunkel's 'The Sound of Silence':
'Hello darkness, my old friend. I've come to talk with you again.'
How on earth do they expect me to lie still when I am laughing so hard at the sound-track of the doomed?
When they started playing Elaine Page, I was ready to shoot myself and save the bloody insurance company the aggro. Luckily, the machine stopped before I could do myself any harm.