Arrrg.

My friend Mad(eline) has a very clever blog to which I would like to draw your attention. The link is here to the right: "Mushroom City". Good stuff. Very descriptive of our day-to-day life on the job here. Japan is crazy.

My rants are less clever-funny than hers, but I think perhaps we share similar frustrations. Frankly, sometimes I am appalled.

Last week my orthopedist, Dr. Birkenstocks Tightpants, decided to put on my hard cast. We had been delaying that process because of a nasty wound on the top of my foot, the result of being dragged over a rough wooden bridge. But we put the hard cast on, finally, so that I could return to teaching in schools; it wasn`t safe for me to run about the city with a splint and an open wound. Well, the wound wasn`t quite healed when he put on the cast. So he put a bandage on my foot, under the cast, and drew a little box on the top of the cast. The plan was for me to return to the hospital yesterday, to see another doctor, who would change the bandage inside my cast. What fun.


Yesterday morning I arrived to the hospital early. Furano has a nice shiny clean new hospital with multiple stories and English signage and lots of people scurrying about. There is even a little vending machine, near the front door, to purchase your anti-microbial paper face mask. And a Lawson`s convenience store in the hospital, in case a patient gets the munchies. すごい! I went for X-rays (weekly), and this time didn`t need to remind the X-ray tech to give me a lead apron. He`s getting to know me. Apparently using a protective lead apron is not a standard offering to most patients. After X-rays I visited the crazy accessible restroom (Japanse toiletrooms and bathrooms are so different, and very strange).


And then I was wheeled into my appointment. For about a half-hour a nurse huffed and puffed over my cast, trying to saw open a tiny square of plaster over the bandaged wound. She used the saw and pliers; I prayed fervently that she wouldn`t accidentally stab me, and attempted breathing exercises to calm myself. My heart raced and my palms sweat. Thanks bejesus, she finally finished her task and I had a small box open around the wound. Ew -- I'll spare you from that pic. The inner bandage was hastily changed by a new physician, Dr. Chubby Noeyecontact. When I asked him about the weakness and pain I am still experiencing in my left shoulder, he recommended exercise. Hmm.

A day later, my foot hurts even more, and the flakes of plaster are getting into the hastily-bandaged wound. I think the whole cast needs to be removed, and the bandage redone entirely. I asked my supervisor to call the hospital this morning, so that I can have the bandage properly redone today. Hemming and hawing. I don`t quite understand why things are so difficult here. . . After an hour and a half of deliberation, my sup called the hospital and heard they cannot see me today but that I can come in tomorrow. Tell me, why can a hospital not see me?! Because I am telling the doctor that he needs a do-over? Because the hours of operation are limited? Because some committee needs to meet and write up a report about my bandage, prior to my next appointment? Arg.

All of this would be a lot more fun if they gave me some decent pain medication. Mom gets perkaset for her knee, and I get the equivalent of children`s tylenol.