"Okay," I said, even though at this point, my voice had finally recovered and the coughing subsided a little. What the heck, I thought to myself, I'll finally get to see what all the fuss is about. What I mean by "fuss" is that my coworker warned me to never, by any means, EVER go to the hospital. She said that it is a bad experience and that you will end up being there for hours and on top of everything, you may get over-diagnosed and even quarantined. In hind sight, this was the worst advice possible and those were some sick days that could have been put to really good use. Regardless, I was at work hacking up phlegm and coughing the words to "Heads, Shoulders, Knees and Toes" with no voice, a migraine and a fever just to avoid something that I really needed . . . a doctor and a few days off from work.
So I arrived at work extra early this morning and my manager managed to convince the unsuspecting Japanese teacher (who happened to stumble into work early) to take me to the doctor and do some translating.
We walked 5 minutes down the street to the hospital. On our way, the JT decided to get a quick rundown of my symptoms so that she could accurately translate them to the doctor.
"Headache," I said.
"Headache," she repeated. "okay."
"Coughing," I said.
"Okay," said she.
"Congestion."
She paused. "What's that?"
"It's, you know, when your chest is uh, well . . . when your chest is full of . . . you know? Like, when your chest hurts," I said. Of course my Webster's dictionary definition of congestion didn't quite do the trick so we decided to cross that bridge later.
When we got to the counter, the lady asked us to fill out some forms. I wrote my name in Romaji (English letters) and the JT looked a little anxious. "Sensei . . . uh . . . can you write that in Katakana please?"
"Okay," I said, excited at the idea of being able to show off my skills. At that moment, my mind went blank and I couldn't think of the character for the sound "Eh."
"Eh - eh - eh" I said, repeatedly (like the intelligent representative from America that I am) until finally she made a mark in the air for what the letter looks like. 4 letters later (ri-sa-be-su), and she took the form out of my hands and said, "I'll do it!" We walked over to some chairs and sat down.
"Please take your temperature," the JT said, while handing me a thermometer. I grabbed it from her hand and laughed a little at how odd it is to take your own temperature out in the waiting room. Either way, I opened my mouth to insert the thermometer and the JT snatched it out of my hand with an impressive reflex.
"No!" she laughed. "Put it under your arm."
"Aaah," I said, relieved.
"What's wrong with you today?" she asked me. I looked at her for a moment, wondering where this bold line of questioning came from. She laughed and pointed at the form. "That's what it says here, 'What's wrong with you today?'"
We both got a good laugh from this and moved onto the next question which was "Why are you sick?" which was equally hilarious.
Now while filling out the forms, a man in a wheelchair was staring and pointing at me. Of course, this is nothing new so I ignored it. Regardless, he wheeled himself over to us and offered me candy.
"Does she speak Japanese?" he asked my coworker (in Japanese, of course - but I could get an idea of what he was saying). My coworker said, "No" and explained that she was translating for me. "Ask her if she knows about Deep Purple." he says.
"Do you know Deep Purple?" she asked me.
"No," I said.
"Oh" (pause) "Well ask her if she knows (some obscure name that I forgot to write down)."
"Do you know --?"
I shake my head.
He eeks out a few "Eh-toes" (which is Japanese for "uh") and then barks out "Sayanora" and wheels himself back to wherever he came from.
We got up, handed the clipboard to the nurse and fifteen minutes later, we were ready to be seen. Now my being in the hospital felt a little more attention grabbing than usual. I got a lot of stares and points, and nurse's heads poked from out of doorways and hallways all over the place. It was actually a little creepy. The nurses looked very 1950's with funny, paper hats, white uniforms covered by a pink smock and white, knee-high stockings and white sneakers that squeaked as they walked by with their clipboards. At one point, one of the patients (an elderly gentleman) that was getting his checkup was talking so loud and pointing at me so adamantly that he decided to hop up from off of the "check up bed" and walked over to me to get a closer look. It was really awkward.
A nurse came out into the waiting area and began asking about my symptoms.
"Do you have headache?" my translator asked me.
"Yes," I said.
"Do you have cough?"
"Yes."
"Do you have . . . eto . . . ehhh-to ne . . . green stuff? Stuff in your . . . eto ne . . . is your cough make yellow, green stuff come out?"
Me - Mucus? (pause) Phlegm? You mean phlegm?
Her - Eto ne . . . (pulls out electronic dictionary)
Me - Phlegm . . . yes! There is phlegm.
Her - Ehhto ne . . . (pushing buttons on electronic dictionary - points to word) this? phlegm? Do you have phlegm?
Me - (sigh) yes.
Her - That's probably why you have congestion in your chest.
Later on, they called me into a small room that looked like the nurse's office at my middle school, to get my height and weight. The nurse had to climb on top of a stool to reach the top of my head.
Everyone got a kick out of this but I didn't really feel like being a "happy" human-spectacle today, so after they finished, I rolled my eyes, mumbled "Arigato gozaimas!" and sat down to wait for the doctor.
When they called me into the room, a man who looked like a younger, Japanese version of Walter Matthau was sitting at a desk in a small room. There was a chair, embedded into the floor, right in front of him. I sat down, feeling a little too close for comfort. He asked me a bunch of questions, with the JT translating and then he reached for a metal tongue depressor and stuck it in my mouth. Now what bothered me about this was that the depressor was, first of all, not disposable and number two, it had just been sitting in a cup with other instruments. He didn't clean it beforehand and he didn't clean it after he finished putting it in my mouth. He just returned it to the cup on his desk without so much as a second glance. (I'm shivering right now, just thinking about it!).
So after all of the normal line of questioning, he prescribed some cough syrup, a packet of antibiotics, a packet of fever pills and a packet of stomach pills to subside the side effects of the antibiotics and fever pills. Receiving all of that medication was a bit overwhelming. Especially since all of the directions and precautions were written in Hiragana and Kanji.
Regardless, I shrugged my shoulders and gave the nurse a warm smile. It'd only cost me $12.50 and one hour to survive my first visit to the doctor, but the experience of bringing a little bit of excitement to my local hospital by just being me . . . priceless.
woooooow....
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