All i had to eat that day was an onigiri from the combini and the food i made myself at work + the makanai. On my way back home on the train, i had a sudden pain in the stomach that was so strong i could not even stand (everyone must have thought i was crazy). Well, i’m gonna pass a few details but for 2 days, i had an awful belly pain, felt like i “had to go” but it just wouldn’t come out. Finally, my boyfriend convinced me to go to the nearest hospital (i lived in Kichijoji, Tokyo) and it looked quite decent (compared to what i had seen before). And then the doctor starts to poke my belly, gives me a tenteki for about half an hour and then the verdict comes in: i have apendicitis! Really doctor? Cauz i really feel like all i have to do is take a s**t but it just won’t come out. And he told me (thankfully) that he couldn’t operate me there, that i had to go to a bigger hospital (Kyorin) which i did the next day.

I spent the whole day on a wheelchair, they took my blood, urine sample, cat scan, xray, saw a gynecologist and every possible doctor out there, and 5 hours later i found out i had food poisoning! Just like i thought! They gave me some powder to drink and told me to drink lots and lots of Pocari Sweat…..10 days (!!!!! trust me, it’s VERY LONG) later i could finally leave the house and the only good thing that came out of this was the fact that i lost 5kgs.

Basically they almost butchered me for crap :p

That’s when i decided never to go see a Japanese doctor again unless necessary.

I’ve had two encouters with the Japanese health care system, and both times I was amazed at the idiocy. One time, a Korean female friend of mine, who’d usually drink lots of alcohol in the weekends with no problem, had a beer and one glass of redwine and fell into a really strange, semi-unconscious state and occasionally muttered something about stomach pains. Me and my friend tried to get her to drink water and basically come to for about 2 hours, where we repeatedly tried to get her to count to 5, say her own name etc. After this, we reasoned that we’d better get help. So we called a shit-express of an ambulance that came about 20 minutes later. The guys in the ambulance weren’t really bothered with her state, and told us that she was just drunk, and completely ignored everything we said about the possibility of the cause of her state being unrelated to alcohol (medicin, food poisoning etc, the ambulance guys weren’t having it). They had a look at the redwine of which she’d had one glass, and patiently explained to us idiot gaijins that redwine is strong alcohol. In the end, they wanted to just leave without her, but my friend I talked them into taking her along. Actually, we just said: “Well, don’t you think you should take her in for observation?” and they went: “ah, okay”. In the ambulance, they asked for her name, adress etc, and that was it. I asked them, if they weren’t go to ask, if she was on medication or anything, and the guys were like: “Woah, she’s on medication!?!”, so I said: “I don’t think so”, and they went: “So she’s not had her medication!?!” and I went: “I don’t know if she’s on medication at all!”. They just shrugged at this and took her to the shit factory of a hospital. There, we waited for several hours while she had saltwater pumped into her arm. No blood samples were taken, no question were really asked about anything. We kept saying that she was in pain, and that it was obvious her stomach hurt, because she kept touching it and making grimaces but that wasn’t interesting to the doctors at all.

Luckily, she woke up by herself feeling really ill in the morning, and we got out of there. It was just as well, beacuse the hospital was about to “close”, and we were told we had to leave anyway. At this point she’d been out cold for about 6-7 hours after one beer and a glass of redwine. We hurried home, and I managed to make it to school next day. Even now, I wonder what the hell happened that night. Maybe she’d had some bad food or something before drinking the “strong redwine”, who knows? The doctor sure as hell didn’t care. Needless to say, the whole situation was much worse that what I’ve been able to articulate her. I don’t do the story justice. Suffice to say that Japanese doctors are inept fuckers.

After a 15min walk from the ‘nearest’ station, we came upon a building that looked more like an abandoned countryside shed….but I thought, “we’re here now, so might as well see what the doctor says…”
Inside, was what can only be described as a cross between a second hand bookstore and a 1970’s NASA Space Centre. Dusty bookshelves and strange machines with nintendesque control panels…
I explained the problem and filled out the paper and was told to wait whilst the nurse wen t back into a ramshackled office.
In the waiting room two old men sat patiently. One had a cigarette in his mouth. I was a bit surprised, but then assumed he was about to go outside…Then I saw the ashtray on the table. THIS WAS A SMOKING ONLY WAITING ROOM!
Given the state of the hospital, I wasnt so surprised and just decided to stand outside.
Soon I was called…into the OFFICE!Yes the office was the only room!
So i was made to stand half naked in the OFFICE!
THe doctor pushed so hard at the abscess that I had to wail..but he seemed to realise straight away what needed to be done..and said i would need to have it cut whilst under general anaesthetic….
more to come!

For reference, my experience with the US medical system is thus: Shots for allergies until the age of 13. 20 or so vaccinations in my time, 20 or so cases of Strep Throat, and through all of that I’ve been treated properly and in a timely (longest wait maybe 20 minutes ever) manner.

Oh and I do have one question of the Japanese health care system, (When I get out of college, I plan to get a little work experience *I have none, and no chance of getting any before I graduate* as an English teacher in Japan, either through JET or the other large program) Is American Health insurance accepted there? I know I’ve got another 4 years before I need to worry about it, but really, this is the kind of thing where you are lucky to get an answer whenever you ask.

He actually.. In front of me now….. GOOGLED my symptoms..

He finally agreed with me!!

I am half Japanese and have spent many summers in Japan; my bad medicine experience was at 10 years old when I had what was probably the flu, but had no tylenol (it was illegal) to bring my fevers down. A doctor prescribed an adult dose of an antibiotic along with Excedrin which is probably the worst thing to give to a 10 year old with a fever: the combination caused me to have heart palpitations and night sweats and landed me in the hospital.

My most recent ailment is a head cold and after doing searches for “Japanese cold medicine” I landed on this blog. I have an instinctive and internal refusal to seek medical care while I’m in Japan, so I’m not surprised to see so many people responding to Japanese medicine with revulsion and disgust.

What gets to me most is not the cronyism or the malpractice — these things happen everywhere. What I can’t stand is the grotesque gulf between the resources available in Japan and the actual state of medical practice in this country. This is a first-world nation with a standard of living that puts American quality of life to shame. Japan should be at the forefront of medical advancement, and it certainly is not.

My thoughts on this are that the lack of progress in Japanese medicine seems to be self-imposed. As we can see in these posts, arguably the biggest problem is the way in which Japanese culture intrudes upon what should be a scientific process. The idea that the patient is wrong, that the patient should die in an ignorant and noble fashion, that doctors should not be challenged, and that pain and ugliness are good: these are culturally-relative choices that are applied to the scientific practice of medicine. Really, what does one have to do with the other? What place does an attitude of deference and respect have in the scientific method — isn’t part of the scientific method the possibility that you’ll call some other party “wrong”?

I’ve tried to wrap my mind around the idea that a nation’s science can be guided and shaped by its culture. But I keep getting stuck on this point: while culture is relative, physical health is not. A Japanese person and an American both struck by the same illness are, biologically, the same thing. So it troubles me that there is a failure, in Japan, to recognize that perhaps science should be free from culture. In a land of great politeness and respect — a culture of great creativity, ingenuity, and sophistication — it shocks me that they have allowed those very same practices to stunt the growth of the medical field.

There’s that old joke about comparing America and a container of Yogurt: if left alone for 250 years, the Yogurt would develop culture. This is one of the first times I’ve been made deeply happy by that joke. I’ll take culture-less medicine any day.

Went home to Vancouver, Canada for Christmas last year. My baby son developed a bad rash on his rear-end. Took him into a local “walk-in clinic” which my father had been to a few times. After waiting 3 hours, (thankfully it was near a mall so we shopped a bit for Omiyage) saw the Doc.

He was very nice, and explained things well. Prescribed a cream and away we went. Used the cream and the reddning went down but the rash didnt go away.

A week later and back in Japan, rash was still bad so we went back to our Doc. - An ancient old guy now working only part time who my wife originally went to when she was a baby!

We told him the story. He too a little scape of skin, checked it under a microscope and informed us the Cdn. Doc presecibed the wrong cream. Gave us a different cream and the rash was gone in two days.

One plus was meeting my wife on the first occasion. I cant complain about that.