At first I just thought my digestion was off. After meals I felt bloated, and there was a dull ache right in the middle of my back that wouldn't go away for months. I kept telling myself it was nothing, but I finally went to the hospital, and a blood test showed my tumor marker levels way above the normal range. After more tests, I was told there was a problem with my pancreas and that it looked like about stage 2. That was the first time I really understood what it feels like for your mind to go completely blank.
If there was any small mercy, it was that they saw no sign it had spread to other organs, so my condition was still operable. There was no reason to hesitate. The operation was a major one, removing the head of the pancreas, and I'm told it took close to seven hours. Recovery was honestly slow. I had expected to bounce back quickly, and there were plenty of frustrating days when my body just wouldn't keep up with my will. Still, little by little, really just little by little, I got better, and those numbers that had been so high at the start kept dropping until they're now in a stable range. My CT scans show no sign of recurrence yet either.
Once the diagnosis sank in, the first thing that came to mind was, "Should I go to one of those famous big hospitals?" I, too, started out frantically running around to a few well-known hospitals in Seoul. My family all recommended going there as well. But the more legwork I did, the more a different thought started to take shape.
Because those places are so flooded with patients, it's realistically hard for a single professor to remember and look after every detail of my case. The junior doctors do their absolute best, but that's a limitation of the system, not anyone's fault. To get surgery scheduled, I had to wait a long while, and the time spent sitting face to face in the exam room was a few minutes at most. That left me feeling uneasy.
Then I looked into a regional university hospital, and it surprised me. Looking at the professors' backgrounds, many of them had actually trained at those same big hospitals and graduated from the same schools. Unless it's a truly unusual case, I realized I could just as confidently entrust myself to a university hospital near home, something I only understood after comparing them directly. Rather than being pulled in by a famous name and waiting blindly, what mattered more to me was who would see my condition first and carry me into surgery without hesitation. I chose by that standard, and as a result my surgery was scheduled quickly, and they looked after me attentively the whole time I was admitted.
There is only one reason I'm writing this: please don't keep putting off getting checked, even for vague symptoms. I dragged it out for months myself, and it's chilling to think how things might have gone if I'd waited any longer. If something feels even a little off, get tested first. I hope this can be even a small reference for those losing sleep over the same worries. I sincerely wish everyone good health. (This is, after all, just one person's experience, so please be sure to discuss your treatment and choice of hospital with your own physician.)