Gastro-Adventure
This past Saturday was quite an adventure… for my stomach. No – Theresa and I didn’t try some new Japanese food or get sick off the sushi we are so fond of. I have had occasional bouts of indigestion and, although it is easily treated on an as needed basis with stomach medication, my doctor in America recommended that some time in the future I have an endoscope examination (that’s the camera on the end of a long tube that they stick down into your stomach). I didn’t have time to get it done before we came to Japan and have been putting it off for a while until we got more language under our belts. With having passed the level 3 test and having some recent heartburn, I finally decided to make an appointment. We talked with some Japanese friends here and they recommended a doctor that they had used.
When I called for an appointment, they were able to get me in quite quickly, but unfortunately, the appointment was at 8:30 on a Saturday morning. So much for my day to sleep in. After talking with the doctor for a few minutes, we were taken into a room where I was given some medicine to drink and then had to lay down while the nurse put a tube coated with a local anesthetic into my nose. After a few minutes the doctor came in and off we went.
I will save you all the unpleasant details (unpleasant being the optimal word) but suffice it to say, they had it set up so there was a big monitor just inches from my face with a feed of what the doctor was seeing on the camera. It was a great review of Japanese anatomy words as the doctor paused at each interesting junction to play tour guide and snap a few photos with the camera.
Thankfully, Theresa was there to play translator for some of the more complicated instructions as it would have been rather hard to use my dictionary in that position. After hunting around for a while and taking a few samples, he proclaimed that he didn’t see any obvious problems and then removed the device. (It’s still making my stomach turn just writing about it.) I was given a bluish-green liquid about the viscosity of honey to drink to stop the bleeding from some of the scrapings he had done and was given a supply of more of my stomach medicine and sent on my way. The whole thing was over in around 45 minutes – fairly efficient for what is supposed to be a socialized medicine system.
The more pleasant part of the morning (as far as my stomach was concerned) followed as Theresa and I went to check out a large shopping mall in the next town over that a number of people had told us about. One of the reasons they directed us there was that the mall had a large international food store. Although the prices were a little higher than usual, it was nice to see familiar snacks – the most important of which was Theresa’s coveted salt and vinegar chips and a block of Colby cheese! After picking up a few things for ourselves and some gifts for our language helpers, we grabbed a quick lunch and headed home.
Praise the Lord for our continued good health. Pray that we will continue to have health and strength as we learn Japanese and connect with people.