hospital visit leaves me pissed off

Today's appointment at the D&F Hospital could have been a happy one. I had a 9:40 slot and got to the hospital around 9:30. The lady at the front said I'd already been checked in (she sounded as if she were asking a question, though, thanks to her rising intonation, so I initially misunderstood her and thought she was asking me whether I'd checked in yet). By about 9:35, the doc was already looking at my toe. He continued to insist that I do stretching exercises for the tendons in my sole; I didn't understand why until I Googled what was going on (see below). The doc told me that the wound looked a lot better compared to two weeks ago. He pared away more callus, then left it up to his assistant to administer iodine and bandage up my toe. That all sounds great, right?

What the doc didn't mention was that, in whittling away my callus this time, he'd cut a little too deeply, leaving me with a bleeder. I didn't notice this until I was in a cab, on my way to the Yangjae Costco to pick up my avocados from the storage locker. I happened to look down at my toe and saw that the entire bandage had gone varying shades of pink and red. Now, iodine isn't quite blood-colored, but it's close, and I initially wondered whether the assistant had simply slathered on too much of the stuff. But the crimson-colored stains on my toe bandage indicated that, no, this was good old blood. And it was bleeding robustly enough to have soaked the entire bandage within minutes of my getting into the taxi.

Here's a shot of some shorn-away callus:

No blood here! We begin innocently enough.

And here's the top of my blood-soaked bandage after an hour in the taxi (I took this shot while in a restroom close to the Yangjae Costco):

Here's what all the bleeding did to my fucking sandal:

And here's my foot, free of the sandal:

The guy really butchered my toe, and I can't feel a thing:

Here's a pic from after a cleaning (I have all sorts of medical supplies at my desk in the office):

Oh, don't worry: it's going to bleed again at any moment.

And here's a pic from ten minutes after I'd bandaged everything up again:

As I said above, I took this pic ten minutes after re-dressing the wound, so you see how much the thing is bleeding. This really pisses me off because a new wound means new possibilities for infection. And I had just gotten to the point where my toe was no longer bleeding! This sort of incompetent nonsense feeds in to my general leeriness about Korean health care. I'll grudgingly admit that my time in Samseong Hospital wasn't as bad as I'd thought it would be, but my bleeding toe brings me right back to my general impression of Korean health care: there's no real care there. The doc cuts too deep and makes you bleed, and of course he's not going to admit to having just made a mistake because, you know, Korean pride. Just cover the wound in iodine; the foreigner won't notice. This isn't the sort of thing that inspires trust, and for today at least, it looks as though my bandage will be soaked again within the hour, so it's hourly changes for the next day or three! 

And Christ, what am I going to do when I have to sleep? My boss just bought me a whole new set of silicone toe caps, but I'll just bleed right through those. I think I might just have to cover my entire foot during the night.

As for the question of how my sole's tendons relate to my toe wound: here's a reference I found while in the taxi and heading toward Costco. The abstract says:

Diabetes mellitus causes patients to develop sensory and motor neuropathy. Sensory neuropathy in patients with diabetes results in decrease in protective sensation. Motor neuropathy causes tendon imbalance. Tendon imbalance causes increased mechanical stress in the foot. This increased stress can cause foot pain and calluses and can progress to forefoot ulcers. Less often the ligaments fail before the skin, which can cause arch collapse and then a midfoot ulcer of Charcot foot. Foot pain in diabetics is common and frequently results from Achilles tendinitis, plantar fasciitis, midfoot arthritis and metatarsalgia. Tendon balancing can decrease stress in the foot which can relieve foot pain, heal forefoot and midfoot ulcers, prevent ulcer recurrence, and prevent progression of deformity in Charcot foot. Tendon balancing could prevent most of the amputations now being done on diabetic patients. Tendon balancing should be used earlier and more often in treatment of diabetic foot ulcers, foot pain and Charcot foot.

At a guess, the doc was trying to explain all that to me during my previous visit (I'm talking about the same doc who just mangled my toe); now, at least, I understand what the sole/toe connection is. If I don't want my foot to turn into a crumpled, crippled, talon-shaped mess, I need to do the tendon-stretching exercises, but I'll have to look up tendon balancing so I know how to do the thing right (YouTube has videos, I see).

I have my new set of meds, and I'm supposed to go back to D&F Hospital in two weeks, but as you might imagine, I'm kind of reluctant to do so. If I can find a foot clinic that's closer to home, I might switch to that. 

More later, when I'm less freaked out about the unnecessary bleeding.