Influenza as Incentive

After 21 hours straight in bed, I am finally able to do more than just lay around wishing I were doing something. Arguably, blogging is doing something, so here I begin. I tried this once before, when living in Taiwan, but apparently my account was deleted due to inactivity. It is a good thing inactivity does not always lead to deletion....

Why does this thermometer take so long to beep? Honestly, five minutes? Then again, at least it is in my armpit and not somewhere more unpleasant. Who thought of the rectal thermometer anyway? I mean of all the places one could conceive of to... never mind. Still waiting for the beep....

At last! Survey says: 36.5 degrees Celsius. That, I am pretty sure, is good. Yesterday it was 39.3.

Oh yeah and speaking of shoving long foreign objects into various orifices, I had to do this with what can most easily be described as an elongated Q-Tip, minus most of the soft cotton end, at the hospital yesterday. The doctor, who was kind of cute and about my age, and female too, said in quite matter of fact Japanese: "This is going to hurt." Uh, yeah, OK, well thanks for the warning. So she started, rather unceremoniously, to put it in, and I immediately jumped back. She seemed to have no appreciation for the fact that this was territory heretofore untrodden by the patient in question. No one ever tried to stick anything up my nose before, and I needed time to get used to the idea. I asked if there were no other ways to see if I really had the flu, and she said nope, this was the only way. One more scrap of my innocence to be taken by the Land of the Rising Sun. Finally I asked if I could do it myself. I like to be in control of this kind of thing (doesn't everyone?). I switched nostrils and, ever so slowly, in it went. Not so many years ago I would inhale spaghetti noodles through my nose and pull them out of my mouth, mainly to sicken friends, acquaintances, and random onlookers. But even that did not prepare me for the incomparable sensation of the super-swab. I felt a little violated, to be honest, when the doctor was doing it. And what's worse, I told her so. Though I know how to be polite in Japanese, I failed utterly on this occasion. After the ordeal I apologized profusely for my rudeness, but I knew the damage was probably already done. Any ideas I might have had about a cup of green tea after work were crushed before they could blossom.

An interesting tangent, while on the topic of Japanese medical practice: A few months ago an Australian friend of mine had way too much to drink and managed to find a way to get hit in the head by a subway. (Speculation continues as to how he accomplished this feat, but two of the more credible theories are: 1) He was bending over to throw up on the tracks; 2) He was looking to see if the train was coming yet and, alas, it came.) When I heard the news, I and a Japanese friend went directly to the hospital to see him. She took it upon herself to tell the hospital staff that I was his cousin, and advised me not to speak any Japanese. Somewhat reluctantly I went along with her ruse. Since he believed me to be family, the doctor told us the whole prognosis. This is what he said: "He is in a coma. He will never come out of it. His brain is like tofu. He is a human vegetable." That was all in Japanese. Then he looked at me and asked, in perfect English, "Have you been able to contact his parents?" "Uh... no," was my clever reply. Anyway, to make a long story short, that same friend of mine, after waking up from his coma and going back to Australia for a few months, is now back in Japan doing business again. I told him what the doctor had said and his response was: "I love proving people wrong!" Apparently the saying "always get a second opinion" holds doubly true in Japan! It seems that because of cultural differences, doctors here prefer to paint a pretty dark picture of the situation, then if reality proves to be brighter, all the better. For if they were to hold out hope which would later be deferred, that would be shameful. This is not my observation only, but comes from many conversations with Japanese friends who all agreed that Japanese doctors, as a rule, have a tendency to be rather pessimistic. So remember that if you are ever in Japan. They may SAY you are dying, but you might just have dandruff.