a weekend in the ER

Did anyone think that I could move to Japan and NOT have an odd medical problem? Please don't read this post if you're eating (ahem, Erin!). So on Friday night, I made myself a really nice dinner of fish, toast, and rice with tomato, onion, seaweed, sesame seeds, soy sauce, and seafood seasoning. Needless to say I was really excited about it. That excitement, along with the fact that I'm an inexperienced fish eater, caused me to forget that fish in Japan still have bones in them.

Well I ended up getting a sharp bone stuck in my esophagus on my first bite. At first I thought I might be choking, and die alone in my Japanese apartment which was embarrassingly messy at the time. But then I realized I could breathe and talk, so I ran over to Jeff's apartment and informed him of the the situation in case he had any ideas for what to do. It was reeeeally painful. From what I could tell the bone was sharp and hooked or perpendicular to my esophagus. It made me salivate more, which caused me to swallow more, and swallowing made it dig farther into my esophagus! We called one of my bosses, who was eating with everyone at the office (so everyone found out) and he said that Japanese people just eat rice when that happens to them. So ate the rest of my dinner, which was delicious, but didn't help. The pain was so bad that I didn't think I could sleep, so I decided that I should probably go to the hospital.

The Naruto hospital said we should go to Tokushima, so my boss's wife picked me and Jeff up and took us to the Tokushima Hospital. By the time we got there, it had been two hours since I had eaten the boney fish and the pain was getting worse. Once we got to the ER and I signed in with my spiffy Japanese National Healthcare card, we waited in the waiting room. Twenty minutes later, a nurse came into the waiting room, took my temperature, and discussed my problem with us in front of everyone else in the waiting room (from what I've read, lack of privacy is common in Japanese doctors offices). Then I went back and saw a doctor, who couldn't see anything by just making me say AAAAAH. So he called a specialist, who arrived 15 minutes later. He told me that the only way for him to know what was going on would be for him to stick a tube/light/camera down my throat via my nose. If he saw something, he would stick a tiny pair of scissors onto the end of the tube and cut it. If he couldn't see anything, he wasn't sure he could do anything to help.

I was already freaked out about the whole situation and being in a hospital altogether, but I was in a lot of pain so I thought I'd try out the tube thing. Jeff was translating everything for me, by the way. He's studying for a Japanese proficiency test, so he was learning a lot of vocab throughout the evening. The doctor hadn't mentioned exactly how it was going to go down, so I was quite freaked out when he started blasting my nostrels with some chemicals and then sucking them back out. The tube with a light went through my nose easily, but I could feel the heat of the light as it went down. I'm not really sure what happened then, but I know I was making one heck of a squinting-what-the-heck-is-going-on-face. The tube came out and I started to feel faint, but threw up instead. The bone was still there. I found out later that the doctor didn't see anything during the whole process. He kept saying kowaii, which I found out later means scary. But at the time I thought he was saying kawaii, which means cute. I was so confused why he was telling me I was cute while I was crying and throwing up.

They gave me two options - I could either come back in the morning when the best ear, nose, and throat doctor would be there and go through the same thing with him, or just take pain medicine/antibiotics while I wait for my body to get rid of it on it's own. So I took option B. I got the medicine and the entire visit for 10,000 yen, which is a little less than $100, but that was before the health insurance kicked in! I get to go back sometime this week to get money back (probably about $70) for what insurance covered. They couldn't get it to go through at the time because the computers were down and a real emergency case had just come in.

The medicine helped me fall asleep, and I stayed in on Saturday to rest. I was sad that I had to miss the kids' cultural festivals. The pain slowly moved down on Saturday and the pain reminded me of strep throat minus the congestion and sinus pressure. By dinner time on Saturday the bone had dropped into my stomach and the long scratch down my throat was healing.

Another highlight of the weekend was the discovery of two food items - I found fried pockets of cream corn that are absolutely delicious. They were in the frozen foods dept at the grocery store. I also found a conffectionery shop that sells cream puffs! They are medium size, but otherwise made exactly like those in Wisconsin! They are called shyoo creamu in Japanese, which sounds like shoe cream to me in English... not as appealing. Anyways, they were only 147 yen (~$1.20), so I might give them as gifts in the future.

Today is my first day at the technical high school. I'm teaching three classes. I have no idea what to expect. There are only 11 female students in the entire school. One of the female students who happened to have a ridiculous amount of eyeliner on, told me this morning in the teachers office that I was cute and commented to the teacher that my head was so small!


....jya, never a dull moment


p.s. Dad - those are not hotdog buns. They are like a tiny loaf of bread. Once they were sweetened with little chunkes of apple! I think the bread is tasty.