The Medical Check

Boy am I glad I went for that just so I could experience a little of what their health clinics are like here and report back to everyone. First off, the little urine bottle: so I successfully got the urine in the disposble paper cup but it was a little tough sucking the liquid into the little bottle, you had to do it in one shot and there was a line on the bottle which I assume is how much I needed to fill it. After a few tries, I finally got it with not too much of a mess...

Before agreeing to this medical check, I asked if there would be a doctor that spoke English and they told me yes. Which I suppose isn't a total lie but pretty much all of the exam was conducted by a nurse who didn't speak any English. My coworkers also scared me into thinking I was going to have to drink this gross liquid isotope for a stomach xray but I didn't end up having to. Another foreign girl here thinks that it's because Japanese natives are prone to stomach/intestine cancer because of their high sodium, high smoked foods diet. That goodness I skated that one, I was planning on refusing it. Isotope is radioactive.

Anyway, here is the step by step: Upon checking in, I was given a sweatshirt type thing and slippers to change into, pants kept on but no socks and no necklace.
First exam was a chest xray. In this dinky sterile looking old room. I've never had a chest xray so seeing my chest film was cool. Everything looked normal. Next exam was vision and hearing. It was different versions of the E shape so I had to say up, down, right, or left. The nurse spoke no English so she kept flipping through this paper booklet which had English translations of phrases on it. And she would point to phrases like "now I am going to conduct a hearing test". Hilarious. The thing you had to put to yuor ear looked to me a little dirty and kinda like they didn't wipe it down between patients. Gross.

Now the rooms in this place are all small and close together. Each exam was a separate room but I believe the walls didn't go all the way to the ceiling so you could kinda hear what they were saying in the other rooms. So weird to me because in the US they are super careful about medical privacy. In Japan apparently not.

So my next room was I think an EKG machine. They suction the wires to your chest. I've never had an EKG test either so that was cool. My heart's electrical activity was also normal.

Next up, weight, blood pressure, and blood test. Now the blood test was a little disturbing to me. First of all I do not like getting blood drawn. But I have never had any problems with the nurse finding a vein because I have a pretty big visible vein on both arms. For some reason, this nurse seemed a little nervous and unsure. She first started tapping on my left arm vein and didn't seem so sure so we moved to my right arm instead. Then she tapped around again in a very uncertain manner which made me very nervous. In the end she got it ok though. Whew. All of the needles, disposal bin, and even the vials of blood were sitting on the table which kinda grossed me out. I think the vials were even labelled with patient's names. Again, something that would never occur in the US.

As I waited for the final exam and meeting with the doctor, I was thinking about how most clinics and doctor office in the US are generally so clean and how they try to make you comfortable. I think maybe we are somewhat baby-ed (babied?) in America. I guess I don't really know because I've never gone to a public clinic in a bad area or have never tested the health care systems in other countries either sooo...

The last stop was with the doctor, he spoke decent English, checked my eyes and heart beat and gave me the summary that everything looked ok. I guess I will get my blood and urine test results back sometime in the next few weeks.

I braved it!