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Memories of Japan, part 5: The Country HospitalAug 19 '10 (Updated Jan 03 '11) Write an essay on this topic.
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The Bottom Line In this article, I recount my time recovering from an appendectomy at Hirado City Hospital.
In part 4c (http://www.epinions.com/content_5338144900), I wrote about the typical ending of a teaching day at Hirado High School. In this article, I will write about my experience in a Hirado country hospital. The Hospital Located smack dab between my teacher apartment and the school on Route 383, Hirado Shimin Byouin (Hirado City Hospital) was a monolithic structure rising up amidst fallow and ripe rice fields. Recently built, the concrete structure's straight lines and light-colored surfaces conveyed a sense of modernity that was out of place in the countryside, yet the mere newness of the structure also conveyed sterility and medical competence. I drove by Hirado City Hospital every day on the way to and from Hirado High School, sometimes noting the incongruous nature of a modern structure in such rustic environs. When I inquired, I was often told that the hospital was a convalescence center for elderly folks, of which there were a lot on Hirado Island. In retrospect, it was fortuitous that I not only remembered that Hirado had such a modern hospital close to my apartment, but also that I saw fit to even ask others about it. Driving to the Hospital As I mentioned in my previous article, I woke up at 2:30 am with abdominal pains. At first, I mistook those pains as gas or indigestion, but after three hours of sitting on the toilet, taking a warm shower, and elevating my legs, I realized that the condition must have been more serious than that -- perhaps appendicitis. As a JET, I had heard stories about JET teachers dying of appendicitis, either because they were on a distant island and could not get adequate care or they let the problem persist until their appendix ruptured and they died when the bursted appendix went septic. I did not want to chance such scenarios, so I threw on what clothes I could gather and worked my way to my tiny Honda Today keidosha (Japanese for "tiny car," from which one would not be surprised to find numerous clowns emerging). I then drove myself quite gingerly to the hospital up the road. When I arrived at Hirado City Hospital and entered the clean, rather spacious lobby, I encountered the receptionist nurse. I told her in my best Japanese, aided by my electronic Japanese-English dictionary, that I thought that I might have mouchouen (appendicitis), so she rapidly ushered me into a check-up room. A lab coat-wearing doctor came in shortly thereafter and asked me to lie down. I lifted my shirt and he proceeded to press down with tense fingers on various areas of my abdomen, asking me if this hurt or that hurt. I blurted out my acknowledgment of pain when he pressed down on my lower right quadrant. Just as I thought -- appendicitis. It was indeed providence that I happened to live so close to a modern hospital on an island off the coast of Kyushu. Pre-Op I was prompted to change into one of those open-butt gowns and was wheeled into the pre-operation room at around 7 am. The first person to see him in pre-op was my supervisor, Kenji. I asked him to call my parents and let them know that I was about to go into surgery. He agreed without hesitation and flashed one of his genuine smiles, as if to say that everything was going to be okay. As Kenji withdrew, two young female nurses came in to prepare me for surgery. Being the hairy guy that I am, surgery prep would involve shaving the lower right quadrant of my abdomen, as well as some of the hair north of my male organ. As one of the nurses indicated where she was going to shave, I indicated that I wanted my package covered during the shaving process. The nurse complied by placing a cotton bib-like cloth over my penis and started to lather up the region. As she shaved, the bib-like cloth slid, revealing my manhood, at which I bashfully gestured. She coyly replaced the cloth and finished with what she had to do. Thankfully, both nurses were professional about the whole ordeal, and I forgot about my pain for a time. The Operation The more I think back to the operation itself, the more I find that I actually remember a lot about the experience. One element I remember is that, in Japanese medicine, an appendectomy is a procedure for which Japanese doctors rarely put their patients to sleep using anesthesia, and instead opt for an epidural injection to deaden the lower part of the body and then using sedatives to further numb the patient. This leads me to another element I remember: the administration of the epidural injection at the base of my spine. It hurt like someone taking a blunt object and driving it into my spine while someone else pushed down on my stomach. Okay, that just about describes the actual experience, but I can say that I didn't feel a needle, per se; it was more like a billy club being shoved into my backbone. As the epidural approached full efficacy, a more mature female nurse approached me. Somehow, she recognized that I was an English teacher at Hirado High School and that I was heavily involved in men's basketball. She asked me if I knew of a player named Hirota. I answered emphatically that I did knew this player, after which she informed me that Hirota-kun was her son! In a strange twist of drama, one of my player's mother would be assisting in the appendectomy, but this somehow did more to calm me than make me anxious. After the sedatives were administered intravenously, I drifted into a sedated stupor... Near the End of the Operation I was slowly aroused from sleep with a dull pain that incrementally increased in intensity; it was like feeling pain, but in a great fog of semi-consciousness, almost disjointed. I let out an instinctive yell as I interpreted the pain: the small incision that was made in my abdomen was being pulled apart to allow for extraction of the appendix. Hirota-kun's mom asked me if it hurt. I told her without uncertainty that I felt great pain. As I discovered, the downside of epidural anesthesia is that it can wear off or become less effective, even in the midst of surgery. At the time, I imagined that this may be what some birthing mothers must feel (but I know now, after watching my wife birth our two sons, that nothing compares to the sheer discomfort of childbirth). Eventually, after much pulling and tugging, and yelling on my part, my inflamed appendix was removed and my incision was closed (I don't remember the actual stitching). Hirota-kun's mom showed me that appendix -- it looked like a bloated earthworm. I tried, foggy as I was, to ask her to keep it for me, but she must have done away with it because I never saw it again. Then, I was wheeled to my room. The Room As far as I can recall, my hospital room was located on the second floor of the hospital. I had two roommates; one of my roommates was a gray-headed elderly gentleman who largely slept and kept quiet in his bed nearest the window. My other roommate was pepper-haired, mustachioed, and talked much more than the first roommate. In fact, the second roommate often took it upon himself to check on my well-being by asking me if I had farted yet: "Mada onara sh'ta?" he would ask. At the time, I found it irritating that a stranger would take interest in my gaseous emanations, but I was soon made aware that passing gas was a telltale sign of recovery from any surgery that touches one's gastrointestinal system. So, I tolerated his questioning and chalked it up to both genuine concern and a desire to just strike up conversation with a foreigner. In my time in Japan, I learned many valuable lessons about how Japanese people approach foreigners vis-a-vis their own people. One such lesson was that what is normally rude to ask another Japanese people is perfectly acceptable to ask a foreigner. For example, if one Japanese person asks another Japanese person, "Where are you going?" whilst the second person is leaving his home, all the second person has to say is "Atchi kotchi..," which roughly translates to "Oh, here and there." At that point, the first person's curiosity is satisfied with that programmatic response and the conversation ends. However, if that first Japanese person asks a Caucasian foreigner "Where are you going?" and the Caucasian says, "Atchi kotchi...," the Japanese person will persist in his questioning, as if the pragmatical rules of Japanese sociolinguistics do not apply to non-native Japanese speakers. Japanese people will ask foreigners about how much they earn, where they are going, why they are leaving, and so on. Seriously! Even if you follow the unspoken rules of Japanese conversation and use all the programmatic phrases, you will still be hard-pressed to escape such questioning. Being a rather different culture from American culture, Japanese cultural precepts view certain things as not rude that Americans may find rude. For example, for a perfect stranger to ask if one has farted yet may be rude in America unless asked in a roundabout way; but, in Japan, one can ask about another person's flatulence, especially if the other person is a foreigner. In Japan, Japanese people bump each other a lot in public, but no apology is required because everyone sees the public space as shared by all, thus bumping and being bumped comes with the "being in the public space" package; but, in the United States where personal space is held at such as premium, if you bump someone you should apologize lest you provoke the bumped party to wrath. This is not to say that one culture is superior, but one must realize that Japan's concept of what is rude is somewhat different from a Western view of what is rude; and, it's often the unexpected things that are not considered rude by Japanese people that, to Americans, would seem so obviously rude. Another lesson I learned is that some Japanese people will talk about almost anything just to strike up a conversation with a foreigner. Some of the common conversation-starters I noted were "you are good at using chopsticks" or "you speak Japanese well" or "you look like you've gained weight." I'm serious about the last one! Japanese people will talk about almost anything just to find something to talk about. It's almost as if they were dangling for a cliff, looking for anything on which they can get a foothold. Interestingly, Japanese people do tend to lean on certain standbys, as if there were a Japanese handbook for talking to strange foreigners with whom they have no programmatic expressions they can use -- those standbys being comments about weight, your skill with chopsticks, your Japanese speaking skill, and your even cursory knowledge of anything Japanese. Anyway, with three men in one room, one would think that there would be conflicts over one person's TV being too loud or someone's snoring being too obtrusive, but there were no such conflicts. In fact, each bed was partitioned by curtains and we all had our own pay-per-view TVs, with viewing time paid for using pre-paid TV cards. It was also mandated that one wears earphones when watching TV. American hospitals should take notes... That first day, I slept most of the day, with brief periods of consciousness punctuated by my second neighbor's obsessive concern with my flatulence. Thankfully, after the first day, my second roommate was either moved to separate quarters or summarily expelled from the hospital. Whatever the case, I was happy to welcome a new, quieter roommate. Sumo and Visitors As it turned out, my week-long stay in Hirado City Hospital happened during the first week of the Summer sumo tournament (Natsu-basho), which was excellent for me not only because I was a sumo fan, but because it gave me something about which to talk with most of the other patients, who were indeed much older and, as rumors confirmed, convalescing. On the second day of my stay, I was strong enough to get out of my bed and make forays down the hall. I eventually made my way to the day room, where many elderly gentlemen had tuned to NHK to watch sumo. I sat with apparent interest, which amused the Japanese men around me. They peppered me with questions about if I liked sumo and who I liked. I impressed them with my reasonably vast amount of sumo knowledge and communicated that I liked Chiyotaikai and his tsuppari attack. An atmosphere of collective amusement filled the day room. One thing to remember if you ever go to Japan: you can impress most Japanese people if you take any appreciable amount of interest in anything distinctly Japanese, like sumo, J-Pop, Japanese dramas, or koushien (the Japanese high school baseball tournament). Throughout the week, I had several visitors come to see me, which made every day like a George Bailey moment from It's a Wonderful Life. One day, Kurajiro, Hiromi, and Hideki, who were on the basketball team, came to visit me; they made me laugh so much that my incision hurt every time I laughed. Another day, my JET friend Daniel came to see me on the way home from one of his far-flung junior high school assignments. And, another day, two third-year students came to visit me, which was nice because I normally didn't go out of my way to talk to them. A few of my fellow teachers even stopped by on the way home, including Kenji. Nothing beats the extra attention one gets when infirmed. The food at the hospital was surprisingly good with rice, fish, canned fruit, and ice cream. Unlike American hospitals, Japanese hospitals make traditional Japanese food that is inherently healthy. I probably hadn't eaten that healthily in all of my time in Japan up to that point. The Upside During my stay in Hirado City Hospital, I can fairly say that I had little to complain about, besides waking up in the middle of surgery. The nurses and doctors were kind, my fellow patients were amiable, and the accommodations were acceptable and clean. I even got to keep up with some of the TV shows I enjoyed watching, and I had time to start reading My Antonia, by Willa Cather (which I sadly didn't finish). One day, before I was discharged from the hospital, I encountered my first roommate's wife, whom I recognized from her visits to our room. She was friendly without any pretense, as I would imagine a country person to be. As I briefly spoke to her, she said something to me in Japanese that I still remember to this day: "I never thought I would get the chance to talk to a foreigner." Having probably grown up and lived on Hirado most of her life, she neither spoke English nor even imagined talking to a foreigner on her little island because she didn't speak English. Her comment reminded me of why I learned Japanese: to speak to common Japanese people, like this country lady. Leaving the Hospital After five days in the hospital recovering from my appendectomy, I was discharged from the hospital. In the United States, an appendectomy patient may stay only one night in the hospital, whereas one stays five days in a Japanese hospital. This was one of the many things I grew to appreciate about Japanese hospitals: they will keep you longer just to ensure you get enough time to rest. Does it make money for the hospital? Perhaps, but American hospitals are notorious money-makers and they still try to usher out patients as quickly as possible. At least, that's my experience... In the end, all I had to pay out of pocket for the surgery and the five-day stay was 50,000 yen (or $500), which was reimbursed through JET and my high school. Japanese national insurance covered the rest. Five-days' rest, relatively low cost, modern facilities, and friendly nurses and doctors -- I would have never imagined encountering this at a country hospital in the heart of Hirado Island. To be continued... In the next article, I will explore miscellaneous aspects of my first year in Japan before I chronicle my departure from Hirado.  |
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