Some might wonder (as I did) what EXACTLY you do here in Japan when you get really sick?
When your 3 year old gets sick?
or if an earthquake knocks down your house, you escape and you need medical attention?
(By-the-way, we experienced our FOURTH earthquake last night...AT 3 AM!!) - let me tell you - it is scary as hell to be woken up with your bed knocking against the wall...and you aren't the one making it move. VERY poltergeist.
A-N-Y-W-A-Y,
Here there is a very strict protocol:
Anything emergency - you can call the "ambulance" - but they are NOT allowed to do anything to you, administer ANY treatment or anything of the like. They are merely TRANSPORT people.
If you want someone to DO something - stop the bleeding, wrap a broken leg until you get to the hospital to have it reattached or even just have someone tell you they suspect you are hypochondriac...you call the fire department!
Why the fire department? I HAVE NO IDEA.
Anything non-emergency...you are on your own.
Before we moved here - we had a friend of a friend who had just moved back to the USA from Japan - she gave me her "medical" book. All doctors in our area, their "specialty," and addresses and phone numbers. While I thought this was the best thing she could have ever done for me...now that I am here - I see it makes no difference what-so-ever! NONE!
My son is three, and if you have a kid....you KNOW they get sick ALL THE TIME. All the fun little germs that follow them home from school or daycare or the dreaded play area in the mall. So while we have been here only a short time - we have now seen THREE of the different children's doctors.
In the States, mom's usually go to great lengths to find a pediatrician BEFORE they have their kid. They want to make sure that they like their personality and demeanor before entrusting their sick child to them for the next 10 years.
I had that. Not anymore.
Now - I just HOPE I can understand, and I pray that my son never gets anything worse than a cold!
So, short version: my list of the doctors:
(let me preface this by saying: since we cannot read Japanese - we call the doctors by whatever the picture is on their office door. and they mostly all have one)
1) The Bluff Man
2) The Garden Lady
3) The Dolphin
4) The Pig
Everyone here tells you something, good and bad, about each doctor - so we just started going - to see who made ME feel better about my sons illnesses.
The Bluff Man we have seen several times. He is somewhat quick, he speaks fairly good English, and we can usually get in the same day we call.
His office is clean and 'big' compared to everything else I have seen here. It has one bathroom (old school style), two exam rooms (both of which you can see into when you walk in the front door) and his office - which also doubles as the MAIN exam room.
He prescribes the same medicine EVERY time. Luckily it has worked. I basically went in the 1st time and told him "we need Amoxicillan - the strongest you have." (Here the medicines are about HALF the strength of medicines in America)
But it makes me wonder if he EVER prescribes anything else. Or if Amoxicillan is his answer for it all?
The Pig I was told NEVER to go to. But in an emergency flu situation - I decided to try it. I was shocked when I went in. VERY small. The waiting room is about the size of a walk-in closet. There was no hallway to the exam room - there was a door, and then you were in a room about the size of your average American dining room.
Once in the 'dining room' there was desk in the middle of the room, half of the room seemed to house all the supplies - stacked against the wall (and I swear there was a gurney pushed up against the boxes - casually covered by a sheet). The other side of the room housed a couch (very old school) with a velveteen blanket over it and a stool between the desk and the couch. The couch was the exam table...scary.
This man was very talkative, and spoke very fast - broken English. He was more interested in "talking English" with me and showing my son very rudimentary magic tricks - than he was in diagnosing my child's illness.
Its sad when your 3-year-old asks why the strange man-doctor was doing those weird tricks.
Finally, The Garden Lady...I have heard she is the best pediatric doctor around here. So much so that the adults try to go see her as well. This is where we ended up today.
Once again we walked into a building and immediately we are in the middle of 25 people waiting! While in a normal size office, or an office with more than one doctor, or even a ratty-ass Centra Care - this might not be anything to be alarmed about. But when you have just arrived in another walk-in-closet - - it was cause for concern!
and of course they are all staring at us. Foreigners, blonde, and very tall. Yep, we fit right in. ugh.
After I filled out the paper work, she said "2 hour" - I said, um...NO.
We have appointment. She shook her head. "We no take appointments." - well that's funny since someone told me this morning to be there at 10:30.
She walked away - and then came out another door (which I never even saw it was so small) - and she motioned us in. Maybe because we were foreigners - who knows. I was just happy to go ahead of all those others waiting!
I was so happy to follow her I hadn't paid any attention but once I closed the door and turned around - low and behold - I had walked into a coat closet that had been made into a makeshift exam room.
I kid you not - I could sit on the dwarf size 'cot' and put my legs straight out and touch the other wall with my feet. The room contained only a pillow, a sitting stool and a large file cabinet. My stomach got queasy just at the thought of "what have I gotten us into now?"
So they finally shuffled us into ANOTHER room - with a large (well, relatively speaking) partition. I swear it looked like a make-shift M.A.S.H. hospital. You could hear everything going on with the patient on the other side of the partition.
Three nurses hovering on the corners - all with the Michael Jackson type hospital masks on and what looked like candy-striper outfits on.
Then a little kid comes out from the other side - sporting a mask, an IV and the rolling liquid bag. It took everything I had to not whisk my son the hell outta there...right then.
So she (Dr. Sato - as I now know) was nice. Spoke good broken English and she was quick. She said he didn't need medicine "right now" - but if his fever stayed until Wednesday - bring him back to give him a BLOOD TEST. I thought, what-the-hell? Then the vision of the kid with the IV bag and rolling pole came back and it was all I could do to get out of there.
So we are home, no medicine, and no closer to getting a diagnosis. We are loading up on Vitamin C, liquids and lots of rest.
And all with the conclusion that if push comes to shove...it will be back to the Bluff Man for at least a little Amoxicillan - to kill WHATEVER it is that lurks inside my child. (and hopefully some peace of mind knowing I am trying to cure him).
Suddenly the very large, over-priced, 5 doctor office we previously had in the USA- - doesn't look so bad.
Out of their closets~
Deeds
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