The next few days were a blur, I was newly married and preparing to leave my new wife for the first time.  As part of the Army Logic I was forced to return to the states on their buck.  I didn't really feel any need to make this trip, as I was planning to stay in Korea, but alas I had no say in the matter.  So, there I was four days after my wedding heading to another country.  While it was good to see my parents, I was desperate to get back "home".  I stayed with my parents for 2 weeks before convincing my mom to drive me back to the airport.  She's never been very good with that, I think the only reason she let me go was because I was actually married.
     I got back to my family and started enjoying the time off.  I wasn't terribly desperate to find a job, the bar was actually supporting us at that time, but I got sick of flying out to Japan or Hong Kong every 3 months.  Finally, the Korean government got tired of me doing that, also.  After basically lounging around for a year I took a job at Osan Airbase working for AT&T as technical support.  This lasted just long enough for them to realize that they could not get me the immigration status I needed.  The KNS explained that I shouldn't be working on a tourist visa, and made some rather direct and explicit threats.  I quit my job that day.
     Fast forward to just after September 11, 2001.  Things had gone to shit everywhere.  This terrible event caused unknown havoc around the world, not just in the U.S. and those nations touched by the war on terror.  It was also largely responsible for the decline in my bar business here in South Korea.  The troops were locked down pretty tight here, and unfortunately by the time they lifted the restrictions many of my regulars had left.  These are the guys who would normally introduce the next set of regulars to the bar.  Not this time.
     Not too long after this I received another call from AT&T.  They had worked a deal through AAFES to provide SOFA status to two AT&T personnel.  They wondered if I was interested in coming back to work for them.  Of course I was!  Sweet!  A legitimate job!  Commissary access!  PX privileges!  I was pretty happy, although the commute was no fun on the city bus.
     Not terribly long after this my current company (SSRT and please don't ask about the acronym) took over the contract from AT&T.  This was a small company that primarily dealt with cell phone rentals and pre-paid phone cards.  I'm not sure what they were thinking buying a contract for an ISP, but that is what happened.  We have grown exponentially since then, and are on nearly every base in Korea now.
     It was about 6 months after this that we first noticed that there was something wrong with Chong Mi.  She had begun bleeding whenever we were intimate.  It didn't stop, it was like having a permanent menstrual cycle.  She went to her doctor, but he made some ridiculous statement about her foreign husband, and told her that if it didn't cause any pain then she was probably fine.  It wasn't fine with me, I was uncomfortable with the entire situation, and our sex life became nonexistent.  I pushed and pressured and finally got her to go to a gynecologist in Pyongtaek.  This was a very frightening day for us.  The gynecologist said that she had a cyst and that it needed to be operated on immediately.  As in he wanted to start within the hour!  We filled out all of the necessary documents and got her into prep.  I don't know now if it would have made any difference, but her blood pressure was too high to go through the surgery.  She had always had a problem with low blood pressure, so this was unusual to us.  The doctor put her on medication to lower her blood pressure and said we would try again in 3 days.  Chong Mi kept taking this medicine for over a month, but it wasn't having any effect on her pressure.  She wanted to go see a different doctor.  I went with her, and this doctor said he couldn't see anything on the ultrasound, but he wanted to try an invasive ultrasound.  He could see something there, but to me it all looked like grey blurriness.  He recommended a consultation to a large hospital in Suwon.
     We went to this hospital, Ajou University Hospital, and they hospitalized her that day.  They didn't tell us how long her stay would be, nor what the problem might be.  It seemed serious, as they wanted her in the hospital immediately.  It would take almost a week of testing before they finally told us the diagnosis.  This was the hardest news I've ever had to hear.  Chong Mi was diagnosed with cervical cancer.