[Namsan Ddalggakbari] Diseases Encountered in the Clinic, People Met Outside the Clinic

Country Doctor Traveling Through Rural Villages
A Stark Critique of the Neglected World

Elderly Unable to Visit Hospitals Due to Motion Sickness or Knee Pain

Problems in Medical Education System Treating Side Effects with More Medication

[Asia Economy Reporter Seungjin Lee] "The moment you say there is no answer, the answer disappears. The moment I say I am indifferent, the answer is gone."

Yang Chang-mo, a visiting doctor and author of In the World Where Pain Greets, roams around rural villages in Chuncheon, Gangwon Province. He steps out of the clinic and faces a world we have not known, or rather, have known but deliberately ignored. The author steps into a world that our society has turned its back on, believing there is no answer.

Within it, there are people, not diseases. Grandpa Son, whom the author met, shaved down every doorstep in his house, dragging his hips, just to meet the doctor for a mere three minutes. The author continuously reflects and contemplates as he encounters a world unseen in the clinic through his home visits. His reflections return as a sharp critique of society.

Through his experience of home visits, the author unravels records about what lies 'beyond the clinic.' When he heard that an eighty-year-old man, who had no pain anywhere, had not been able to visit a hospital for years due to mere motion sickness, he was puzzled. But only after stopping the car on a winding road like a tangled thread beyond a steep hill did he understand.

The grandmother’s room, who has not been able to go outside for years due to stiffened knee joints, holds a lump of charcoal. It was placed there by her children to eliminate the urine smell. It is not that she cannot do it, but the daily life that makes the thought of being able to do it impossible is revealed. Yet, the doctor reduces the patient, who is placed in such a life context, to a ‘disease’ conveyed only through charts on a monitor.

The more the author’s home visit experience grows, the more blatant the problems of Korea’s medical education system become. A system where more prescriptions mean more profit tries to treat side effects caused by medicine with more medicine. After repeated prescriptions, patients end up living with about ten different drugs. For arthritis patients, a doctor’s word to change lifestyle habits is more important. However, doctors only continue to prescribe stronger medicine.

The author self-deprecates. "In the clinic, I do not talk with patients but face diseases. (...) The context of life, such as who they are, where they live, and what they do, disappears the moment they enter the clinic. Everything vanishes like magic, leaving only one thing: ‘symptoms.’"

The medical system problems the author points out resemble our society. Our society, busy covering side effects with other side effects, has left only ‘symptoms’ behind.

Real estate policies that began with the cries of housing refugees who have nowhere to lay their bodies. As policies cover policies, the starting point of the problem is forgotten, leaving only stories of Gangnam apartments rising by billions of won overnight. Even among the dozens or hundreds of pledges by lawmakers claiming to protect the vulnerable, patients’ lives are absent, leaving only prescriptions and medicine packets with unknown side effects.

The author points out that when a sick person moves, they focus all their nerves on the painful area; similarly, when society decides on a direction for change, it must first consider the most painful parts of that society. But our society is one prescribed with a painkiller injection. A painkiller injection does not eliminate pain but blocks the pathway through which pain is transmitted to the brain. Our society is merely a society where social pain is blocked.

Ultimately, in a society where social pain is blocked, it is not the state but neighbors who play a role. The author repents for trying not to cross the boundary between patient and doctor. The image of Nurse Choi, who freely crosses the line and enters the patient’s life, leads the author to reflect and seek answers about the ‘painless society.’

A patient lying with monitoring machines, IV fluids, oxygen respirators, and gastric suction tubes tangled like a spider web on their body. The author says, "We are like a spider that has descended into the darkness of this world, carrying its whole body on a thin spider thread from a high place. If these thin threads are woven into a beautiful net of solidarity, I, like a spider, can lay my body on it and endure this cold and windy world."

The author urges us to become ordinary neighbors who do what anyone can do but no one does.

In the World Where Pain Greets - Written by Yang Chang-mo / Hankyoreh Publishing / 14,000 KRW