Friday. Midday. Gyeryong, South Korea.
I was walking to school to play basketball with some of the students. I had finished my winter camp the previous day, I had just mailed some letters to America and transferred money successfully, and the weather was beautiful. I was riding high.
As a student, Jun Yong, and I were walking to school, we walked past a yard that usually has dogs chained up. I noticed one of the dogs barking and running toward us. Funny, I remembered thinking, his/her chain isn't chained to anything.
The dog run right up to us, and barked as we kept walking. Then the dog BIT MY LEG!
I continued on to school, where I checked out the damage. Just a scrape really, with a little blood. I thought since it was a crazy dog I should wash it off, and I did. I played bball, then had lunch with Jun Yong and then went home.
Then things got interesting. I have a history of not going to the doctor's when I should, and so I decided to google rabies since I know nothing about it. What I found wasn't comforting. The big symptoms of rabies don't really appear until 1-4 days after the bite, but by that point it's too late to do anything and the victim dies. I didn't want to die, and had few options sitting alone in my room in a city where I can't really communicate well with anyone, so I called the Fulbright program coordinator.
She told me to call the doctor attached to Fulbright. He wasn't in and I had to convince a doctor to answer my questions, because she hasn't seen me before and doesn't have a record about me. She said it didn't sound too bad but I should probably ask the dog owner about the dog. I couldn't really do that though. So I called my host mom, and then told my host sister what happened, and she told my host mom. Then my host mom called my host uncle, a doctor, who said that Korea doesn't have rabies. That wasn't that very comforting, considering Korea 'doesn't have homosexuals,' among other things.
So I went to a doctor. I knew I would have to endure a visit to the doctors in which I couldn't communicate sooner or later. My host sister brought me to the doctor and translated, and the doctor gave me antibiotics. Antibiotics doesn't do anything for rabies and I didn't think I needed them. They were also the same pills that my host brother took when he sprained his wrist.
From the doctor's office, I went straight to the gym. I was leaving for Seoul in a few hours, and that crazy dog wasn't going to ruin my chance for a workout. At the gym, the gym owner shows me a picture from the internet on his computer, and asks if I've ever seen this kind of dog. He says it's a nice dog, 'kind of like... man's best friend?' It was the same kind of dog that bit my leg today.
