What to do when you fall SICK in Korea 🤒😵😷

While I was on my summer exchange in Korea, I caught the notorious “demon flu” 🤧 - for those who don’t know, it’s just what my friend and I termed it to describe the disease whereby it isn’t COVID but has symptoms that feel far worse than COVID.

This flu was transmitted to and across Singapore towards the end of last year (mainly through clubs) but this disease started spreading in Korea months before when we heard that many of our friends who came to Korea for holiday returned to Singapore sick as hell — one of our mutuals even had to go to the hospital immediately after arrival.

Long story short, we caught a nasty disease overseas.

I truly wish that for this to never befall on anyone but IN CASE it happens, I hope this guide will serve you well.

👉 For exchange students:

If you’re on exchange like I was, your host university most likely has a medical center on campus so you can simply go there directly to seek consult and get medicine for cheap.

Side note: I’m not sure if this will still be applicable by the time you go but my friend didn’t test for COVID-19 before going to our host university’s medical center AND they didn’t even have COVID testing kits so they didn’t prescribe her any medicine and asked her to go to the nearest COVID testing site in her sick ass state 😭😭 SO PLEASE TEST FOR COVID-19 BEFORE YOU GO. This also means you should bring some testing kits there before your trip too!!!

👉 For non-exchange students:

Search online for the nearest clinic. Forget about going to COVID testing sites because they don’t test foreigners (we learnt this the hard way). What’s also unique about Korea is that they separate the clinics from the pharmacies so after you see the doctor, you have to walk for a bit to the nearest pharmacy to collect your medicine which is super stupid to me knowing most of the ppl who go to the clinic are probably sick so why must make them walk more to the pharmacy to collect medicine?!?

Side note: After the incident with our host university and the COVID testing site, we went to a clinic which FINALLY helped her test and she turned out to be negative BUT all they did was to give her some shots INSTEAD OF ANTIBIOTICS and told her to go home and rest. They did prescribe her other medicine for runny nose and stuff but NOT antibiotics, so in the end my friend DID NOT recover and we had to return to the same clinic again. This time - finally - she was prescribed antibiotics and she recovered in 1-2 days.

To give you guys more perspective, we were sick (high fever, SUPER sore throat, runny nose, no appetite) for 9 DAYS (we usually get sick and recover in 3 days in SG) and we never truly recovered fully for the rest of our trip (we’d have random coughing fits and phlegm). Only after we returned and rested in Singapore did we truly recover completely.

All in all, it was a hellish experience and it was unfortunate that a significant part of our exchange was wasted bc of this but at least you guys get to learn from our experience!! 🥲

Summary of key learnings‼️

👉 Bring COVID-19 testing kits before your trip

👉 Test and bring the ART results before going to the clinic

👉 If you’re negative, just ask for antibiotics (my friend regretted not insisting on getting them the first time we visited the clinic).

Bonus: Medicine from convenience stores that worked super well FOR ME (Disclaimer: I have no allergies to anything)‼️

👉 Tylenol tablets - literally superior Panadol, it relieved so much of my pain in a short span of time

👉 “Throat candy” - brought SO MUCH relief to my throat bc the mint flavour really cuts through the soreness

Hope this helps!

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