The Physician of Traditional Medicine Returns from Murim - Chapter 73

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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 73

I contacted Park Seseun to ask when she would be available for a call.

Park Seseun called me back shortly after.

“Clinic Director, hello? What’s the occasion for calling me first?”

“What occasion!”

I got straight to the point. What did she mean by giving the pills I prescribed to a friend?

The pills I had prescribed for her were herbal medicine for dieting purposes.

After Park Seseun returned to Seoul, she wanted an additional prescription to prevent yo-yo effects, so I had sent them as pills to make it easy to adjust the dosage. I told her to start with about 20 pills, then reduce to 15, then 10.

Isn’t it inconvenient to divide liquid medicine?

I thought she had followed my instructions and finished her diet successfully, but now there was a problem because her friend took them.

‘I emphasized so much that medicine is medicine!’

Of course, the target of my passionate speech was her cousin Park Seon-yun, but it’s common sense that medicine tailored for one person shouldn’t be taken by another!

“I’m sorry. I thought it would be okay since pill forms are sometimes traded on secondhand sites too.”

“That’s all illegal! You don’t need to apologize to me, but is your friend okay? What kind of problem occurred?”

If it was just the common side effects I had initially warned about – constipation or insomnia that lasted briefly and got better as soon as she stopped the medicine – Park Seon-yun wouldn’t have been worried enough for me to notice.

“Well, actually that friend has panic disorder?”

“…Yes.”

“She said her panic symptoms got worse. Not just her heart beating a little fast, but she couldn’t breathe… Haha, I never experienced anything like that…”

Really fearless.

Panic disorder is fundamentally related to sympathetic nervous system hyperactivity.

Excessive stress, fear, anxiety, etc. continuously activate the sympathetic nervous system, while the parasympathetic nervous system that acts as a brake becomes weak and can’t calm things down, leading to panic attack symptoms.

And then she took ephedra which stimulates the sympathetic nervous system, so of course there would be problems!

“Of course that would happen. It’s medicine tailored to Ms. Seseun’s body to boost metabolism. It basically becomes poison if you have high blood pressure, heart disease, or autonomic nervous system disorders.”

“I suppose so…”

“How is she now? Since she’s in Seoul, would it be difficult for her to visit the clinic?”

“We actually talked about it yesterday. She probably doesn’t have any schedule for a while, so it should be fine. Whew, I’m sorry. I absolutely shouldn’t have given it to her.”

Park Seseun was very apologetic. From what I heard, it seemed like her friend had pestered her a lot, so I didn’t scold her too much and ended the call.

Three days later.

“Hello~!”

Actress Hyeon Jumi visited the clinic.

She was also a celebrity, so to avoid seeming like I didn’t know her at all, I asked Park Seseun for her name and looked her up in advance.

She was an actress who had transitioned from being an idol group member, had major acting controversies early in her transition, and seemed to still have quite a lot of haters.

‘Hmm… did she develop panic disorder from malicious comment stress?’

I had told her I could see her separately after work hours if exposing her identity was uncomfortable, but Hyeon Jumi said she didn’t need special treatment.

She entered the clinic wearing a very eye-catching orange dress.

“Oh, by any chance…”

“Hello! I’m Jumi~”

She didn’t mind at all giving autographs or taking photos with the patients sitting in the waiting room.

“Hehe, sorry. I caused trouble, didn’t I? Since I was the one who took it without permission, please don’t scold Seseon Unni~!”

As soon as she entered the examination room, Hyeon Jumi put her hands together in a pleading gesture and winked.

“Hello, Ms. Hyeon Jumi. I heard the story from Ms. Park Seseun. I didn’t scold her, so don’t worry.”

“Yes, that’s a relief!”

She flipped her permed hair that reached her waist and smiled brightly.

At least outwardly, she absolutely didn’t look like someone with a mental illness.

Among all the various controversies about her poor acting, bad dancing, thick thighs, strange taste in men, the word panic never appeared.

“Why did you take that medicine? From your appearance, you don’t seem to need dieting at all.”

I asked Hyeon Jumi.

Even if someone looks thin on the outside but has a lot of body fat – skinny fat – Hyeon Jumi wasn’t even that.

If anything, wasn’t she underweight? Her arms and legs were so thin they were just bones, and her waist was narrow. It was natural that her face had no excess fat.

“Ahaha, right. I stupidly searched for movie reviews and got obsessed with dieting, you know?”

“You saw negative comments about your body type and acted impulsively?”

“Yes! My last work had some exposure scenes where my thighs were fully revealed, and that’s my complex!”

Hyeon Jumi lifted up her skirt to show her thighs.

…Those are muscles?

From a martial artist’s perspective, the importance of thigh muscles goes without saying, but even trying to judge by celebrity standards, losing those would be much more disadvantageous.

If she forcibly reduced her thigh muscles, her metabolism would suffer and she’d actually gain weight, right?

Whether I was shocked or not, Hyeon Jumi smiled brightly and began telling her story.

* * *

Hyeon Jumi was naturally optimistic and bright.

With her appealing looks and good social skills, she was popular with both boys and girls during her school days.

Then one day, she was street-cast by a famous entertainment company.

“Wow, an idol? That’s so great!”

The agency people didn’t spare their praise for her. She was pretty, had a lovely personality, and sang well too. That’s how she joined an idol group preparing for debut.

Debuting as the youngest member after a short trainee period.

For the first time in her life, she faced the world’s coldness.

She can’t even sing, so why did they give her so much screen time? She talks too much. She shows off too much. Her double eyelids are uneven. Her philtrum is long. What kind of skirt is that? Cover up those thighs.

At a young age, Hyeon Jumi was stabbed by countless knives.

“The preparation period was short, so it couldn’t be helped! It was much luckier than waiting several years, so I have to endure it! If I work hard, they’ll recognize me!”

But once people got a taste for cursing her, they wouldn’t easily let go.

Until the moment the group disbanded, she played the role of a scapegoat, and after transitioning to acting, she received concentrated fire from fans of her male co-stars.

Why does he have to film love scenes with such a vulgar girl? Did you see her picking perilla leaves for him in the after-party photos? Do we have to see this on TV too? She’s ruining the whole work. I’m sick of looking at her.

“Haha, this much is nothing! I’m used to it~ It’s like an initiation rite that everyone goes through when transitioning!”

Her agency was very worried about her, but Hyeon Jumi was genuinely okay.

Apart from the acting controversy, her debut work did quite well.

Her next work and the one after that were the same. Every time there was controversy, but the results were good.

Fans cheered, and money steadily accumulated in her bank account.

Antis? Stars are supposed to drive both fans and haters crazy!

Hyeon Jumi truly thought that way.

“Gasp!”

So when she was diagnosed with panic disorder, she couldn’t believe it at all.

“Me? There’s no one around me as positive and bright as I am! I don’t care what anyone says!”

She wasn’t forcing herself to act bright.

Work was going well, and she had never felt anything like depression.

On the hundreds of questionnaire items, she checked ‘No’ on all the depression, anxiety, and fear categories.

“The fact that you remember those stories means you’re bothered by them. You should rest for a while and not look at the internet at all.”

But the psychiatrist was firm in his diagnosis.

She didn’t schedule any additional work to rest as the doctor advised.

She disconnected from the internet and took the prescribed medication.

There wasn’t much change. Hyeon Jumi really had never been depressed or anxious even once! She happily traveled and lived her daily life.

Anyway, whether it was thanks to the medication or the absence of external stimuli, she had no panic attacks for a while.

During that time, a movie she had filmed was released.

The response seemed quite good.

So she opened the reviews without thinking.

“…Did I gain that much weight?”

She looked in the mirror. She wasn’t very satisfied with her body. All sorts of things she had heard flashed through her mind.

“Liposuction?”

She thought of plastic surgery first.

But if she suddenly removed fat from specific areas, she’d get criticized for that too.

“Something more natural… Ah! Seseon Unni said herbal medicine diet was good, right?”

She visited a nearby Oriental Medicine Clinic.

But she was refused.

Not only was there nowhere to lose weight, but it could have a bad effect during panic disorder treatment.

Instead, the oriental medicine doctor recommended tonic medicine.

“Unni, unni! Can’t I just try a little bit?”

“Of course not.”

“I’m just curious if I can handle it! Just a little!”

If unni takes 15 pills, wouldn’t about 10 pills be okay?

Hyeon Jumi snatched and swallowed the medicine from Park Seseun.

“Hey! Do you think this is some kind of digestive medicine?”

Park Seseun scolded her, but Hyeon Jumi brushed it off with her characteristic cute laugh.

She just wanted to do something.

“Gasp, huff…!”

That night, Hyeon Jumi couldn’t sleep.

Was it because she read the reviews? Was it because she took medicine that didn’t suit her? Was this just how the disease originally was?

She couldn’t tell the cause.

Breathing was difficult, and a fear of dying struck her.

The attack ended in 30 minutes, but anxious about when it might start again, she stayed awake all night.

“Unni… what should I do?”

Hyeon Jumi confided everything to Park Seseun, the senior she trusted and relied on.

And three days later, she came down to Busan.

* * *

“Ahaha, but I’m fine again now! I haven’t had any attacks since that day. So I was debating whether to come or not…”

“Of course you should come!”

I scolded Hyeon Jumi, who was scratching her head.

Not only about drug misuse, but her attitude toward her own health was too complacent.

How can a panic disorder patient have no anticipatory anxiety like this?

Originally, many panic disorder patients suffer more from the fear of not knowing when an attack might occur than from the attacks themselves, which subside within tens of minutes.

But perhaps because she usually thought of herself as having an optimistic personality, her disease awareness was dim.

“Just to ask, you didn’t come here wanting to diet, did you?”

“Diet is one thing, but I was hoping the panic symptoms might improve too. I came to get comprehensive consultation!”

That was fortunate to hear.

“I heard from Seseon Unni and did some research on the Oriental Medicine Clinic, and there was an article contributed by a doctor from Sowon General Hospital. Looking at it, it seemed like you’re also good at treating mental disorders.”

“…A doctor’s contribution?”

They wouldn’t call a formal MOU article a contribution.

When it comes to Sowon General Hospital, naturally only one person came to mind. Park Yeonggil.

What kind of story did he write?

I turned on the internet and searched for our Oriental Medicine Clinic’s name.

One article contributed to a general newspaper unrelated to the medical field caught my eye.

“Yes! Thanks to the Clinic Director, the doctor’s mother’s heart palpitation symptoms got better! Actually, it seems similar to my condition, so I’ve been boiling and drinking some gardenia and beans too!”

And before I could even read it, I grabbed the back of my neck at Hyeon Jumi’s words.

There’s always someone who does this kind of thing when you reveal the herbal composition!

She was truly innocent and troublesome patient.

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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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