A Korean professor at Johns Hopkinson University…

Professor Jina Young traveled to Patagonia in South America in 2014. Before the disease appeared in 2017, I enjoyed exploring remote locations around the world. [사진 지나영 교수]

Born in 1976 in Daegu as the second daughter. My father, who lamented that he was “another daughter,” did not report his birth until 1980. “I grew up in a place where big cockroaches fly like everyday,” he passed the 2002 US National Examination for Doctors in the top 3%. This is the story of Jina Young (44), who has been a professor of pediatric psychiatry at the Kennedy Krieger Institute, a Johns Hopkins-affiliated hospital since 2008.

It’s a surprisingly changed life. But the biggest change began in 2017. In November of that year, the name of the disease Professor Ji-young was diagnosed with was neuromediated hypotension. The first symptom that appeared half a year ago was muscle pain on the back side, and it quickly became impossible to control my whole body. Chills, dizziness, gastrointestinal problems, and unbearable pain followed. Professor Ji explained in this month’s book 『As Your Heart Flows』 (Dasan Books), “The immune response to fight infection by the body was wrong, and the autoimmune system was attacked by an autoimmune reaction that attacked his body.” “Because of the illness, I had to leave my job for nearly a year, and for two years I was suffering from pain that I could not get up and walk properly.”

He came to Korea in the middle of this month and stays until next month. In a telephone interview on the 29th, Professor Ji said, “I still often become pakimchi, and I have to lie down for about an hour after using my daily energy.” I wrote this book for two and a half years of being stuck on the floor. I bought a stand that I could use while lying down on my computer, attached it on the bed, and wrote it. The book tells the story of a person who “lived hard for a toll” and became ill, putting himself first and looking back on life.

“Life was too busy. At first, I wasn’t good at English, but it wasn’t easy to see psychiatric patients, and I lived really hard after research, education, and thesis. But after I got really sick, I started to think about the meaning of life.” After graduating from the Daegu Catholic University College of Medicine, I applied for a residency at a hospital in Seoul and then dropped out, and left, saying,’Let’s go to America for this reason.’ After attending the Brain Imaging Laboratory at Harvard Medical School, he completed residency and fellowship courses at the University of North Carolina at the Department of Psychiatry. He said, “If psychiatric patients suffering from depression or schizophrenia spoke weakly with unclear pronunciation, they experienced a dizzying sense of despair that they could not understand except for a few words.” To overcome this, I saw the patients 8 hours a day, and then spent the remaining 8 hours writing notes about them and reading English sentences.

Her husband, who is a doctor, gave him the nickname’pit bull’. Such fierce life stopped with illness. “Like God’s joke, I’m dealing with the disease that I have to live against my personality day by day.” Living a life where the body can’t keep up with passion, he said, “I learned that it is meaningful to spend time with my loved ones as much as possible by giving my body and mind plenty of rest time.” He also learned how to refuse what he could not do and the principle of not doing what he was not reluctant to do. “At first, I was really unhappy, and I am still sometimes sad.” But, “Every time I was unhappy, I trained to find good points by force. “I love myself more than I was before I got sick,” he said.

Professor Ji’s fight against illness does not end. He explained, “It is not a dying disease, a rare disease, but a disease that does not heal.” “I have no choice but to raise blood pressure by ingesting large amounts of water and salt without being overcrowded.” After getting sick, he turned not only to his life, but also to Korean youth. “I have lived in Korea for 25 years and in the United States for 20 years. The way young Koreans, especially young people, lived hurt my heart. I wanted to write a book in Korean as a pediatric psychiatrist and tell a lot of stories as a pediatric psychiatrist, seeing that she couldn’t look back at her mind while adjusting to what she wanted around her.” Professor Ji said, “If you look at my life as a whole, there are many very chances. I was able to make those opportunities mine because I had the exact goal of becoming a psychiatrist and taking care of people.” He also added, “I hope that Korean youth can walk hard on the path they want to go without being compared with others or being conscious of others.”

“I want to give my energy to people about seeing patients as a doctor and doing research,” he stopped by this month to talk about the education and future of Korean youth. He created a YouTube channel based on his pediatric psyche and knowledge, and is writing the story he wants to tell teenagers as his second book. “I have lived in the US for a long time, but I am 100% Korean. I want to contribute to Korea. I couldn’t just wait to see that the happiness index of Korean youth was at the bottom.” “I want to tell my story and let everyone know that they don’t have to be the same, and that each one is worth it.”

Reporter Kim Ho-jeong [email protected]