The Physician of Traditional Medicine Returns from Murim - Chapter 278

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Chapter 278

Haneul Korean Medicine Clinic Ulsan Branch.

Almost the same interior as the Haneul Clinic that Chu Miyoung used to run in Busan, with a slightly larger lobby.

As Chu Miyoung and I opened the door and entered, a female clinic director who appeared to be in her mid-to-late thirties greeted us with a bright smile.

“Welcome! Wow, this is finally being sold. Thank you for buying it.”

The director, who introduced herself as Park Gayeong, said she had put the item up for sale a few months ago, but there had been no word until now when we finally contacted her.

Did she only post the sale notice on the Oriental Medicine Practitioner Community?

Unless it’s a small number of clinics that specialize or semi-specialize in intractable skin diseases, they wouldn’t necessarily keep light therapy equipment, so there probably isn’t much demand.

“Come in and take a look. The machine is in excellent condition. It’s like-new used equipment.”

Following Park Gayeong’s guidance, we found a UV irradiator slightly taller than my height in a space that looked like a simple changing room.

It had a structure that opened on both sides like a refrigerator, with long fluorescent-like fixtures attached to all three sides so it could irradiate the entire body with light.

Chu Miyoung had mentioned there were cheaper home-care devices, but those light sources looked to be only about palm-sized.

To cover lesions on the entire body, it would need to be about this size.

“But why are you selling it? Don’t you use it much?”

“Ah.”

I was planning to purchase it to try it out regardless of breaking even, which is why we came all the way to Ulsan.

Park Gayeong suddenly seemed nervous that I might change my mind.

“I did open as a Haneul Clinic, but somehow I ended up getting too many musculoskeletal patients~. I want to add a few more beds but there’s no space, so I’m selling it. I used it quite a lot in the early days of opening, and it’s effective! It’s just that I feel more comfortable with musculoskeletal cases than dragging out intractable patients long-term, so as I focused on that area, my patient demographic changed.”

Park Gayeong poured out words rapid-fire like she was rapping.

“Ah haha, I see. I was just curious so I asked.”

When I waved my hand dismissively, she looked quite relieved and operated the machine.

She was going to show me how to use it.

“Uh, so you change the range with this… wait a moment, the manual is somewhere around here… I haven’t used it for about a year so my memory is a bit fuzzy.”

“You press this to adjust it.”

But somehow, didn’t Chu Miyoung know how to operate it better?

Well, there must be a reason she’s selling it.

I also bought a pulse diagnosis device but since I always just feel with my hands, I’m fuzzy on where the power button even is.

Should I sell it? Hmm, Lee Ahreum and Hwang Sanghun use it occasionally.

“You know it well! You must be really good with machines. Hahaha…!”

“Not really. I used to have one before.”

“Oh, you’re both clinic directors? I thought you came together because it would be hard to carry alone.”

Park Gayeong looked back and forth between Chu Miyoung and me, then clapped her hands as if she just realized.

“I used to run a Haneul Clinic before too. I bought the same model.”

“Oh my!”

Even at Chu Miyoung’s bitter response, she was surprisingly delighted.

Usually when you accidentally meet someone who left the same network you were in, it wouldn’t seem that pleasant.

Unusually, Park Gayeong said this was also fate and suggested we have lunch together.

“Is that okay?”

“I don’t mind.”

Park Gayeong, who was very pleased to sell the machine that had just been taking up space, took us to an eel rice bowl restaurant no less.

“Ah, you’re ‘that’ Director Han Yewon? You’re the person our CEO mentioned. You’re incredibly famous!”

The CEO would be Director Choi Eunhee. Did she talk about me to the branch directors too?

Somehow I ended up hearing a bit about how Haneul Clinic operates.

“So Director Park, you were also forced into bundled sales too.”

“Ugh, Director Chu too? Well, it would be similar for everyone. There are too many things they make you buy while pretending to help with opening preparations. I’m close with the Asan Branch director, and apparently they only get intractable disease patients so they don’t use beauty equipment at all, you know? They don’t force specialization anyway, so you could just see how things go after opening and buy what you need, but I don’t know why they do that. They just make you take out huge loans unnecessarily!”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying. The expensive interior work is killing me too. When I left, of course I couldn’t get proper compensation… I really don’t understand why they insist so much on buying massage chairs.”

And before the food even arrived, Chu Miyoung and Park Gayeong had completely bonded.

“Director Chu, did you buy massage chairs too?”

“I bought 4 of them.”

“Ah…! Still, you did well. I bought 8. The elderly patients do like them, but honestly 8 was excessive.”

“I saw them in the lobby. They were the same model.”

“Really? Did they get kickbacks from there?”

“Maybe…?!”

Since driving out the Haneul Korean Medicine Clinic Daegu Branch, I haven’t really discussed Choi Eunhee much.

I didn’t make a big deal about accidentally meeting her during volunteer work.

It seemed Chu Miyoung had been holding in quite a lot, though she hadn’t said anything until now.

Meeting Park Gayeong, she poured out suspicions, laments, and anger like a fish in water.

“Director, if most of your patients are musculoskeletal anyway, why don’t you just leave? Why pay franchise fees every month?”

“Should I really? I should seriously consider it until my contract period ends. Headquarters doesn’t manage things properly, it’s so annoying! Patients complain to me about nonsense other branch directors said~!”

When she heard that Chu Miyoung had terminated her contract mid-term, Park Gayeong’s eyes lit up as she asked various questions.

“Right now my monthly revenue goes back and forth between 4,000 and 6,000, and the proportion of skin patients here is…”

She even laid out her revenue, patient numbers, and expenses to consult with me.

“Hmm, it seems like you’d do well on your own.”

I only came to buy equipment, but how did I end up giving career counseling to the seller?

Until lunchtime ended, we had an in-depth conversation.

“I hope you make a good decision. Fighting!”

“Thank you for listening to my story, Clinic Director. I’ll carry the machine like… whoa whoa whoa?!”

It wasn’t even that heavy, so why did three people need to do it.

I lifted the light therapy machine and moved it to the car in one go.

“Wow… Clinic Director Kim said no, but perhaps.”

“Stop right there.”

I quickly cut off Chu Miyoung’s conspiracy theory.

The eel rice bowl was delicious, and Park Gayeong’s career counseling was interesting, but since we met after a long time, shouldn’t the two of us have coffee together?

“Just buying the machine won’t automatically bring patients. We need to do some promotion.”

“I’ll post it on Instagram!”

“No. We only bought it for the main clinic, so there’s no need to post on the joint Instagram. I’ll just write about it on my blog first.”

I briefly stopped by the cafe to catch up with Chu Miyoung and discuss how to utilize the newly purchased machine.

* * *

A few days later.

A psoriasis treatment poster was hung in a frame on the wall of Our Oriental Medicine Clinic.

It was thanks to Manager Seo, who always gets things done without being asked, creating an in-clinic promotional poster for us.

While installing the machine in the examination room, I also rearranged things after a long time.

Initially there was nothing, but after buying this and that, we’d accumulated quite a lot of modern equipment.

While ultrasound machines were kept in each treatment room, blood test equipment, autonomic nervous system analyzers, body composition analyzers, pulse diagnosis machines, etc. were placed in the examination room to be used only when needed.

“Oh, does the Oriental Medicine Clinic do light therapy too? I have psoriasis on my arms and legs, can I get that treatment?”

And patient inquiries came much faster than expected.

It was Lee Jeongsoo, a regular patient in his early 40s.

While he couldn’t visit daily like the retired elderly patients, he was someone who came for treatment whenever his back stiffened from work overload.

“Of course. Mr. Lee Jeongsoo, you have psoriasis?”

I immediately brought him into the treatment room and asked.

“Ah, yes. It’s not severe so I forget about it while living, but it seems like it’ll flare up again when winter comes. How do you treat it at the Oriental Medicine Clinic?”

“We plan to proceed with herbal medicine, ointment, and the light therapy shown on the poster. Have you tried it before? How long have you had psoriasis?”

Lee Jeongsoo frowned and thought for a moment.

“It’s been 6, 7 years, and I haven’t tried light therapy. The first hospital I went to was a dermatology clinic focused on cosmetics, so they only gave me ointment.”

“I see.”

“It was steroid ointment and some vitamin-derived ointment, I think. They said if that didn’t work, I’d need light therapy, and depending on the case, I might need to take immunosuppressants, so they told me to go to a big hospital, but fortunately it got better quickly.”

“But it came back the next year?”

“Oh my, exactly. Every winter is scary.”

Originally, psoriasis is a chronic condition with strong seasonal patterns.

When skin becomes dry in winter, the stratum corneum gets damaged, and immune responses become hyperactive, causing inflammation to flare up.

Given his long medical history, Lee Jeongsoo nodded, saying he roughly understood.

“Since they said it’s that kind of disease, I just lived with it. I just applied ointment when it became unbearably itchy, but I was curious if that treatment might help.”

“Let me take a look at the condition.”

Lee Jeongsoo rolled up his sleeves and pants to show the lesions.

As he said it wasn’t severe, the range of lesions wasn’t extensive.

Relatively mild guttate psoriasis was appearing around his elbows and knees.

‘How did I not notice this? Even when treating his back, I would usually use acupoints like Weizhong or Zusanli… Ah, he’s someone who doesn’t change clothes.’

Even now, Lee Jeongsoo was saying with an indifferent face that it was nothing serious, but he was definitely concerned about it.

When treating the back, it’s normal to also needle acupoints on the back of knees and shins, so patients usually change into patient gowns.

Looking at the treatment records, the patient had refused to undress, saying he only wanted needles in his back.

“I can see some that have progressed to plaque form, was this bearable?”

Most were newly appearing papules, but I could also see several rashes where white scales had accumulated in layers, forming lesions slightly larger than coins.

“Ah, I’m originally quite good at enduring things. If you scratch, it bleeds and gets worse, so I just leave it alone. It gets better after winter passes anyway.”

Whether it’s severe or not, he’s certainly on the less severe side among psoriasis patients, but.

“It must have been distressing.”

“Since they said it doesn’t get cured anyway, well. The more you think it’s hard, the harder it becomes, right?”

How could enduring always be the right answer?

Positive thinking is good, but in cases like this, you need to get a bit closer to medical care.

“As you know, psoriasis is an autoimmune disease with unknown causes, and it’s true that it’s not a condition where we can guarantee a complete cure.”

“Yes, I’m well aware.”

“But that doesn’t mean you have to continue enduring the pain. You need to control symptoms and manage it so it doesn’t worsen. Like high blood pressure or diabetes.”

“Ah…?”

Lee Jeongsoo’s shoulders twitched.

Since the symptoms aren’t severe, it would actually be worth trying more aggressive treatment, so how did he come to think this way?

“Moreover, while it’s difficult, it’s not a disease that absolutely can’t be cured. There are many cases where it doesn’t recur for 10, 20 years. Even if Korean medicine treatment doesn’t show immediate effects like steroids, I think it has strengths in that area.”

I’ve actually achieved near-complete cure results several times with just herbal medicine and sunlight therapy.

I encouraged Lee Jeongsoo that he could have more hope.

“Is herbal medicine about boosting immunity?”

“Since psoriasis is a reaction caused by excessive immunity, ‘boosting’ isn’t the right expression. It’s better to say we balance it. For instance, if you have a constitution with excess heat and easy dryness, we supplement body fluids and help skin regeneration.”

“Oh…”

Some vitality returned to Lee Jeongsoo’s previously indifferent expression.

Rather than just vaguely wanting to try the machine because it’s available, showing treatment motivation actually led to better progress.

Thinking that difficult things aren’t difficult isn’t the only form of positive thinking.

“Light therapy helps a lot in calming the symptoms, so let’s start aggressively with 2-3 sessions per week initially and monitor the progress. You can apply medication after seeing how things develop.”

I began explaining the available treatments and prognosis in a calm manner.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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