Middle Age (part 1)

On Friday I'm going to turn 38.

That's closer to 50 than to 20.

I'm terrified.

Little Flowers

One of my students was given some pink washing up gloves as a mothers day present from her 28 year old daughter. I said that, in England, that would be quite an insulting present (and explained why). But she was happy - they had small flowers on them.

Woman, know your place....

And the rest of her day? She cooked and cleaned as normal. I think the point was missed but that's Japan for you.

All I Want...

I'm writing this gritting my teeth through period pains, determined to not reach for the painkillers. I can do it...

It's the middle of - actually, it's almost the end of - Golden Week holiday - a series of one-day national holidays to celebrate various things that most Japanese probably aren't aware of. Actually, that's my (not so) secret mission for the next five working days - to see how many adult students actually know what the national holidays were for.

I should feel rested. I should feel energised. I should have done lots and lots of studying. But I don't, I'm not, and I haven't.

I've had some nice days hanging out with people and some days exhausted at home - trying to study but just not feeling like it.

Exhausted. I have never felt so exhausted in my life. All I want is to not feel exhausted. All. The. Time. All this year. I mean, sure, I've felt knackered before, but to feel SO totally wiped out?

So why AM I in this state?

Well, the MRSA earlier this year really knocked it out of me. For weeks afterwards even walking to the station was quite an effort. I went straight back to work after hospital. I threw myself - tried to throw myself - into the diploma. I changed jobs. I got a promotion. I got 5 days of new students. New responsibilities. I got further behind and more stressed about getting further behind in the diploma. I felt people were wanting too much. Even in a nice way - but just too much. I started getting stressed about the future. About my age. About babies. About my weight. About the amount of time I don't have for the small things - and the bigger things - that I need to do. My sleep pattern fucked up. I fucked up my sleep pattern. My routine changed totally and fucked up my sleep pattern.

All I want is to play with time. I'd like to turn the clock back a few months (or years for that matter) - or at the least add a few hours to the day.

April

Wow, I've become such a crap blogger.

But then again, there's not enough hours in the day as it is.

April weather in Tokyo has been up and down - a promise of summer, a reminder of winter. Quite unsettling.

Had a kid the other day, a five year old - we were doing a quick beachball warmer with 'what's your favourite x?' questions. To help young kids understand things like 'what'syourname' or 'whatsyourfavouritecolour' aren't in fact one word, I'll often get each kid to say one word of the phrase as we pass the ball. After a couple of rounds of favourite sport, drink, etc I allowed the kid to chose a category. She chose BODY PART.... and her answer was LUNG.

And no, I didn't teach her either of those bits of language!

On settling though, the new job is going along well. As far as being senior teacher is concerned, it means I can actually do things instead of just getting annoyed by them. Most of my new classes / students are really nice and a complete change is always good. Although I DO miss teaching big classes of kids.

So that's all been keeping me pretty busy.

The diploma is a mini-nightmare. I'm totally enjoying it but just don't seem to have enough time to do it and catch up on myself and all the reading. I have big breaks at school - in theory - but people want to talk or I need to do something else. But it's Golden Week coming up (a holiday) so that'll give me a chance to get stuck into it.

Quite a few people have left this month, which is always sad. It was the excuse for a good drunken lunch and then some hanami (cherry blossom 'viewing' - ie, drinking in the park) at the start of the month. At one point, a friend and I had gone on a tree hunt (we didn't want to join the massive toilet queues) and got lost on the way back. I'd left my phone with our friends (stupid thing to do) so couldn't call them. Luckily we spotted a man in a Frogger costume (it's REALLY not worth finding an image - 'Frogger' is a cartoon character who is a dog - er, I mean a frog. You can picture man dressed as frog for yourself) - who we'd seen before and he helped us find our friends. Life strange in Tokyo? No, course not.

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Recently there's been a story about Tsuyoshi Kusanagi driving Japan nuts. Kusanagi is a member of a boyband called SMAP who have been very famous for a long time in Japan and who endorses lots of products, etc. The poor lad got drunk, got naked (as is pretty much expected from popstars everywhere else, isn't it?) and got arrested. Since then he's been dropped from campaign after campaign and even debated in parliament here. A load of hysteria over nothing. Of course he has publicly apologised. Ridiculous, eh?

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Another recent story that has caught my eye is that Japan is now paying foreigners to get out and stay out. Racist? Japan? Surely not.

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And my personal annoyance at the moment is why so many things are sold in packets of 3s and 5s here. (Think meet slices, cheese slices, bread slices, etc). It's extremely annoying - yes, FOUR is an unlucky number, bla bla, but then make it six, why can't you?!

Dream On, Deamer

Did I say the weird dreams had ended? They haven't. Well, they did for a few days.

Last night I dreamt I was being seriously reprimanded at work because there'd been complaints about.... my singing. In my dream my singing had seriously upset some kids and I was in BIG trouble for it. I defended myself saying I had a sore throat. (Because of course, without a sore throat, I'd be a hot contender to win American Idol, wouldn't I?!)

Roll on karaoke tonight! Akane and I plan to murder some Oasis.

Today is day three of my new contract. Verdict so far: Well, it was a little strange getting my head around what day it was as on Thursday I worked where I used to work on Friday, with a teacher I used to work with on Saturday and lots of students I've given make up or floating lessons to before. Nice enough day. A little boring.

Yesterday I worked where I used to work on a Saturday with a teacher I used to work with until six months ago on a Saturday. The students were all new though. Nice bunch. Much more interesting than Thursdays students.

Anyway, right now I'm waiting for the miracle of caffeine to step in. I'm shattered. Got into bed at a reasonable hour but hardly slept. Today could be long!!!

May I Clap?

On Saturday night I went and saw Oasis in concert (thanks again, Beth!). The concert was very good but even more interesting, was the crowd. It's been a long time since I went to a big concert (Getting old and all that!) but my memory of big concerts is that people tend to make a lot of noise clapping, shouting, singing, screaming.... and of course, dancing.

On Saturday though most of the people I could see weren't really doing any of these things. There was a little bit of singing and there was clapping - if someone started everyone else off - but on the whole the Japanese crowd was totally passive. Even the band looked shocked.

I went to a baseball game in Japan last year. People made noise there. But there were people telling them when to.

This kind of restraint seems most odd to me.

On the other hand, oh sod it, there is no other hand. Not that I can remember anyway. I still have a cold; I still haven't been 100% okay this year and so bloody tired. Partly because of the diploma (although I've not remembered any dreams for a few days now) and partly the whole job thing - the taking on of so many new students at once. Oh and PMS.

Today was my final day on this contract. My final day of working in a kindergarten. My final day of working in the middle of Saitama.

Shit, I need a break.

To Sleep Perchance To Dream. Again.

Everyone dreams. Really, everyone dreams - but not everyone remembers their dreams. Generally speaking, I've fallen into this latter category throughout my life. I've remembered very very few dreams. And they were all very strange - the ones I remembered. Some were like mini motion pictures. And I've almost always been able to figure out what's triggered them off.

I don't believe dreams predict the future. Dreams sort out your unconscious. They try and figure it all out for you. For me, the memory of a conversation earlier that day, a line from a book, something I've seen in a TV show, a noise, all of these can trigger off dreams

This year though has been something else all together. This year I've remembered dozens of my dreams. Most have been, scarily enough, diploma or job related or, not surprisingly, medically related.

Actually, when I was in hospital, I used to get my first IV drip of the day at 6am. I normally went back to sleep as soon as I'd been plugged in. Now, sleeping while strong antibiotics were slowly plinking into my veins gave me some very very odd dreams. I didn't write them down though, so now I can't remember them. Come to think of it, that's probably not a bad thing.

In the last couple of weeks I've dreamed of other teachers testing me on diploma vocabulary and shouting when I didn't know the answers; I've dreamed of another (single, childless) friend lying on the couch, smoking away, with six of so kids running riot around her (too much 'Wife Swap' and kindergarten, methinks); I've dreamt my mother (who I've not spoken to for almost 20 years) was a hooping champion. And then after she'd told me that, she went running into the street with a man and flashed her bum; I've dreamed of teeth falling out a couple of times (I know that's 'meant' to be money related, but I don't believe that); and last night I dreamed I had to go to Glasgow (I worked with a teacher from Glasgow recently) for a radio interview (er, not sure about this bit) and they were trying to send me there by express train (again, no idea). In the same dream I dreamed of gourmet pet food (nope) and of going to the prom (American high school kind, not Royal Albert Hall kind. And no, I never had a prom at my school).

Come to think of it - I can't remember any more. I'm still traumatised by my mother flashing her bum....

Do you remember dreams often? What do you think they mean?

I just remembered another recent one: I was in a doctor's consulting room (yes, I know!) but they weren't sure what was wrong with me (again, I know!), so they started showing me very complicated flashcards and getting me to name things on the cards. They STILL couldn't figure out what was wrong with me but then I suddenly discovered that if I lifted something with my right hand (I tried a stereo and a suitcase - though not at the same time), then I forgot the proper word for something. For example, I called a bear 'a cat'. Everytime I put down whatever I was holding, I could name things properly and everytime I picked something back up, I couldn't.

Again, I blame the diploma for this kind of dream.

Yesterday - A Day In The Life Of, Or Something Like That

My brain fried yesterday. Got up early. (Early for me, probably pretty normal for most people). Spent the next 28 hours giving tests to 27,000 people. Or maybe it was the next 6 hours giving tests to 14 people. Felt like the former though.

Listened to the 27,000 people telling me how [insert place name] has much nature and [insert place name] is very convenience. And how their boss is amazing and their hero but they didn't chose their job their company made them do it and how they hate their long hours but they love their colleagues and how ramble ramble ramble I'm going to answer whatever I want to but not actually the question that you asked or the question that is in front of me and in fact I'm the same as one of those Japlish signs that ramble on and make no sense but it doesn't matter because the words are all in English and so that's what counts, doesn't it, I mean the words are English so therefore I'm speaking English and English is cute and oh I have much allergy now....

I could feel my brain cells falling into a deep comatic sleep one by one. Maybe they'll never come around again.

And this on the knowledge that if the candidates got a GOOD English grade (which none of mine did) they were getting a bonus equivalent to about 11 months of my salary. That hurts.

After that I spent several hours holed up in a cafe studying. Cos that's what we do here. They do here? People buy an overpriced cup of coffee and sit snoozing or studying for hours in a cafe. Kind of does justify the price actually. Had a good study session but it sent more brain cells to sleep.

Had 90 minutes of fun and joy with an elementary class after that. What's your favourite movie? I like Disney Movies because they are cute (mid-20s female). Where did you go for your honeymoon? [yes, of course we'd covered the meaning of 'honeymoon'] - 3 minutes of uhmming and ahhing but a student who married two years ago before he remembered.

By the time I'd finished the 17 hour lesson with them by brain was fried.

Got home. Flatmate decided to ask me to correct a translation she'd had to do for her internship. That made my brain ache even more. Sentences about how workers were disobedient because they sometimes didn't stay chained to their desks but actually went and spoke to other interns. And sometimes even outside the POSTROOM. Gasp!

And then my head exploded!

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Written on a paper cup (and no, I don't understand it either):

The Art of Cold.

Enjoy what you do?

We hit the street.

We hit the high.

Yes, Deer.

They like English in Japan. They do. Really. English words are cool. Especially on signs and t-shirts. Hell, sometimes they even make sense. More often than not they don't though. Many a time I've seen some 'English', scratched my head and concluded: yahoo translator? google translator? random words randomly thrown together (in a random way)?

Case in point: 11-year female student, wearing a t-shirt with lots of English ramblings on it about a walk or the countryside or the summer or something. With the final sentence reading:

I am happy to have a good deer.

Suggestions for what this might mean are welcomed.

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Mums here are busy with housewifery, running the kids around, bentoing, etc, and sometimes they have to clean their kids schools - if there's going to be a festival on, etc. Dads work. Hard. Long hours. They don't have so much to do with the every dayness of their kids in many cases. UNLESS they are the dad of a kindy kid and then, well....

One of my students told me how whenever his kids have sports days at school (kindy) the dads all go to the school at 5a.m. and start queueing waiting for the teachers to open the gates at 7a.m. Dad can then rush to get the prime spot to watch Aya-chan or Kouki-kun doing whatever kindy kids do at sports days. Mum is probably at home making bentos while this is going on.

This would never happen in England. I'm not saying mum and dad don't give a shit, but a) sports day on a Saturday???? and b) queueing at 5a.m. on a Saturday for a kindy sports day???? and c) they just wouldn't. We always had sports days in the week and there were no parents competing for 'spots to watch from' races, as far as I remember.

Actually, primary school sports days were fun in England. Sack races, egg and spoon, obstacle courses.... Maybe I hated them, but the idea seems a lot of fun now.

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Strawberries and kahlua are a very good combination. Thought I'd share that with you!

2.33am Ramblings

I should be asleep. It's the early hours and I have work tomorrow but I can't get the sensible part of my brain - the part that's telling me how tired I'll be at work tomorrow - to take control of the part of my brain that wants to think, worry and be generally anxious about life.

It's been an odd week. It's been a quiet week, actually. Nightmare kindy finished last week - thank fuck - and this week I had just one kindy afternoon and another day where my lessons were observed by a guy from our company. He said he enjoyed watching my lessons. He said I was a good teacher. Oh how easy it is to fool people! - Seriously, it WAS nice to get positive feedback. It's too easy in life to be undervalued or ignored unless you do something wrong or someone wants something more from you. A nice comment or two really means a lot. Shame so few managers seem to agree with that.

Actually, that wasn't the only thing that made me feel good this week. Totally unexpectedly, I was offered a senior teacher position. I'd heard through the grapevine the old senior teacher wasn't going to be replaced, but I guess they changed their minds. That - as well as the kindy comments - kind of gave my ego a bit of well-deserved stroking!

So, why the anxiety? Well, it's all pretty stupid really. I don't really know exactly what the senior teacher position involves for one thing. Another thing is I'm actually getting a totally new schedule in April. I'd expected at least one (if not two) of my days to stay the same. That's like 50+ new classes to find out about. It's totally starting from scratch without any students I have a rapport with.

Thankfully the senior teacher job is in a school I know well and the other two days are in schools I'm working in now - but on different days.

But then it kind of fell apart today when I got a reminder of how bad communication can be in this company.

A to B: Jo bla bla bla. Don't tell Jo you know.
B to me: Is bla bla bla true?
me to A: What exactly has B been told? I thought nothing was definite about anything.
A to me: B shouldn't have said anything to you.
B to me: Don't tell A I said anything to you.

Gaaaaah! It all came flooding back how bad communication can be in the company.

I will miss teaching large groups though. And I'll miss the office lessons too. I won't miss the split days, the running around, the disorganisation in some companies....

And it'll be so nice to be with other teachers again. Most of my current working week is spent in isolation from other teachers.

On the health front - I'm pretty sure all the symptoms from the bacterial infection are gone and all the side effects from the drugs. The flu I caught is gone too. But I do have a cold and a ragingly sore throat this week! One day I'll be okay again!

It's nearly 3am. I've not read back over what I've just written. I hope it makes some kind of sense!

So, in the cold light of day, after some five hours sleep, I think the conclusion of this is that I'm a worrier. I like worrying about things. It's totally irrational, but that's me. Irrational. And not so secure within myself that I feel confident about what I do - hence why it's so nice to get comments on my teaching. Otherwise, I go from day to day thinking that if a lesson went really well, then I'm a really good teacher. Likewise, if something didn't work out the way I wanted it to in a lesson, I tend to think I'm a really bad teacher. Maybe every teacher feels that way. I don't know. I think the main anxiety here though can simply be summed up by saying a total change is both very exciting - clean slate and all that - and quite scary. And all of those getting to knows to go through!

Right. I'm off to do some studying now before going to work. Catch you later.

Blurrrr!

Am feeling deeply sorry for myself.

I had to cancel drinks Beastie and co last night and I had to cancel lunch with a friend today - and I love going out for lunch on Sundays (Saturday nights are often much more of an effort because of an early start on Saturday and working all day)...

because I have a nasty cold. Glands in my neck/jaw (!) are throbbing, nose is running, head is thumping, temperature is running (not too badly though) and I just generally feel like cack. Other times when I've got a cold, I've managed to sleep it off not feel cacker the next day. My immune system is just a welcome party ground for any germs that want to come and play I think since all the medicating started for the bacterial infection. By the way, I've been off anti-biotics for almost a week now.

My house is causing a slight dilemma. The woman who owns it - an Swiss woman who belongs to some religious cult - is a bit of nasty c*nt, imho. She doesn't give a shit about the house or the condition/state it's in and she was very rude when I asked her about getting compensation for lack of earnings caused by the condition of the house making me sick. I didn't actually expect to get anything but you don't know until you try and there is a good chance I got ill before going to India, but that just worsened the condition (long story but other members of the house had a
very very minor version of my original condition). Anyway, she was a c*nt about it.

So, here's my dilemma: move or don't move. It may seem like a no-brainer - bad house = leave (and there are a fair few reasons to go) - but the reasons to not go are pounding away too - the location is perfect, I really like my room, I have my own kitchen and I'm not going to find anywhere else for this price in a decent area with a private kitchen, looking for somewhere and moving takes a LOT of money and time - neither of which I can spare, and recently the house has been deathly quiet a LOT - which has been perfect for chilling out and studying. HOWEVER, the communal areas ARE in a bit of a state, many of the other people in the house are lazy fuckers (luckily, as I said, I DON'T have to share a kitchen), the agency either doesn't send a cleaner, or sends one that does fuck all. Then there's the mice, the damp, the list that could go on...

But then AGAIN, the area is pretty quiet too and SO convenient and, even if I did find somewhere that the price was okay, maybe it wouldn't be quiet and studying.... ooo dilemma!

Students, eh! What'd We Do Without 'em?

So. It's that time of year when kindies start finishing. I've had three kindies a week for the last year (well, two from last summer). One of them can take up to two hours to get to or from if I get my timing wrong. I teach classes of 25 four and five year olds there and have loved it. They're all great kids and it was a fun year teaching them. When I go back to full-time eikaiwa I WILL miss those kinds of classes. Another one was much closer and pretty easy but I didn't get the same buzz from the kids as at the first kindy.

The third kindy was close to here but was an absolute nightmare in terms of the disorganisation of the school. I hated going there and was thrilled on Thursday when I finished the final class.

Yesterday, a student in her late 30s (I think) told me her mother keeps hassling her about not being married yet (she's a flight attendant - not exactly the ideal job to marry and settle down...) and had set her up with a date. He'd turned up with a wig. A curly wig. And a very bad complexion. But she'd kept an open-mind on her first opinion thinking he may have been nice inside. He wasn't. She told me she'd never let her mother set her up with anyone again.

This is actually a pretty common thing here, for unmarried 'kids' in their 30s or 40s to get 'introduced' by their parents to 'suitable' marriage potential. In some cases I feel it may be as much desperation to get the 'kid' to leave home as to get grandchildren...

It's funny how students really can express themselves well, whatever their level, when they really want to. Today a very low level student explained to me that she was married but she wanted a boyfriend. She'd told the same story to another teacher last week. He told me he'd taught her lots of useful language like 'extra-marital affair', etc. I explained what 'serious' or 'fun' in a personal ad meant, what a 'classified ad' was, what JM meant and we talked about speed dating, parental interference, etc!

Today, with a very good level 16-year that I teach, we talked about things you can do to live a long life. There was a listening exercise that talked about the importance of knowing about you families health. I asked her if she knew about her families health and she said, 'I'm going to die of cancer and so is my mother'. At the sight of me doing an impression of a slightly stunned goldfish she clarified that there was lots of it in her family. I hesitantly asked if her mother was okay, and thankfully (as in I didn't want to deal with an awkward situation) the mother is absolutely fine, gets checked once a year, bla bla bla.

Students, eh! (I've mentioned before the joy of studentS telling me their friends/relatives killed themselves, or that their kids have anorexia and what should they do, or how boring they find their husbands, or how they hate their husbands being at home because of how much extra hassle it is for them, etc).

All in a days work though...!

So.. there was a student...

... that I taught last week. A housewife. With lots of fish. In seven tanks. She spends four hours. Every day. Cleaning the tanks out and feeding them. Bloody insane, in my opinion. Surely life is too short to be spending 28 hours a week looking after some daft goldfish.

Er, it's very cold and windy right now.

Er, er, er I'm having hesitation about going back from a week of mainly kindergarten and offices to full-time eikaiwa (language schools). I'm probably just nervous about what schools I'm going to get though. Although I will miss teaching large groups of small kids and the office lessons too. Surprisingly. And the extra money.... Oh what to do, what to do...

Er - nope. I really am struggling to find anything to say that isn't connected to my health. I'm STILL feeling as rough as. My BONES hurt. My muscles STILL feel week. I STILL have a painful stomach and mouth ulcers and fucking candida. And scars. And my last wound keeps periodically bleeding a bit. Well, if I push it, it does. Oh, and I almost passed out in Shinjuku station today. Doing well apart from that.

Am I being a hypercondriac imagining I have something serious? Or am I just caught up in the MRSA and the symptoms I still have and the side effects of the antibiotics I'm STILL on. (I've now been on a variety of types and strengths of antibiotics since the MIDDLE OF DECEMBER).

At least I don't have high blood pressure, diabetes, cervical cancer, HIV, hepatitis, lung problems or.... shit, can't remember the other things I was tested for over the last few weeks.

And yes. I WAS tested for HIV. And no, I wasn't told beforehand. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure you can't get an HIV test in England without having counselling first. But that's Japan. Different priorities, I guess. (I think I mentioned they went into reams of panic in the hospital when we thought I might have flu - the tests were inconclusive because I was on so much medication - and wanted to put me in isolation / confine me to my bed - with the curtain drawn / make me wear TWO masks before talking to anyone / not have any more visitors - but MRSA - in a ward with lots of patients weak from a variety of illnesses - no problem to have me running around all over the place. Go figure!)

Enough. I promise to try and stop ranting /whingeing about my health. It's just depressing me quite a lot and it's my blog and I'll rant if I want to... Hell, I don't even want to talk about it to people anymore, it's just so bloody tedious. So my space, my ranting.

P.S. I'm hating this year, so far. Wouldn't it be nice if there was a restart button available?

If you've got nothing good to say...

My life:

Study.
Work.
Wonder when I'll be 100% healthy again.

*sigh*

Still, could be worse!

An Alternative Reality

Well, donno about you, buy I've had enough health hassles recently to last a lifetime, and then some.

Last entry I talked about how pissed off I was where I was being treated. My insurance company recommended a British doctor, so I trotted off to her clinic, where she looked at my arms, heard what the Japanese doctors were doing and confirmed that in her opinion they were doing the right thing. She also agreed I should be admitted and that I should continue treatment at the hospital because they were familiar with my case.

Tried rushing back to the hospital to tell them I did want to be admitted, but it was too late for the day, and all the doctors had gone.

Next day - Saturday 31st - I had another appointment for an IV drip and told them I'd changed my mind and did want to be admitted after all. And, although I'd been told there could be a wait of a few days for a bed, I suddenly found one available. Had a chest-xray and EEG or ECG or whatever it was - lots of suckers plonked on my chest and various readings taken. Then had to and fill out various forms, be introduced to the nurses on my ward, etc, before they allowed me to pop home and get some things (Quote: what do you need to get? We have everything you need at Japanese hospitals) - with a tight deadline to return by. Luckily I live less than ten minutes away.

The next 12 nights were spent in the hospital. I didn't get bored - I practically never get bored - but I did get fed up at times. Fed up with being treated like a kid, fed up with the meals, fed up with not getting any information given to you unless you asked direct questions, fed up that I had crap veins and the IV line that should have stayed in my arm the whole time I was there (I was on 6 antibiotic drips a day) had to generally be replaced every 1-2 days as it stopped working. And that sometimes it took six painful attempts (on a few occasions) to actually get one that worked.

I did have a lot of things with me to entertain me and time went by fast with all the treatments, routines, etc. I made some nice friends in there and had lots of visitors. And the nurses were lovely. Plus the downstairs shop sold Haagen-dasz.

Three days before I came out I developed a flu-like virus. I had so many drugs in my system they couldn't actually verify what it was. Luckily that pretty passed. They were threatening to put me in isolation if it didn't, as the hospital has strict rules about things like that...

but not it seems about MRSA - which is the main thing I was being treated for. I did have (probably) cellulitis or, more likely, erysipelas at the beginning, but the MRSA was the biggest problem I had - and multiple subcutaneous abscesses - for anyone who cares about the details!

The worst thing - apart from being treated like a kid - was the floor we were on - and we had six beds in our room and about 8 rooms or so in our area - was that patients were all mixed. There were patients like me and my friends who had to be in hospital but were not suffering life-threatening conditions, mixed with people suffering advanced stages of lung cancer, etc who would shout out in the night, people on chemo, people who were pretty much vegetables and people who had nothing wrong with them but had - for example - potential complications that might come up (serious clotting problems etc) during routine dental treatments, etc and so were there 'in case'.

Can you imagine the mood that put everyone else in? Talk about bad for the morale.

Of course, me and my fellow-inmate pals were trouble makers who broke every rule we could get away with and made far too much noise, kept wandering/wheeling off, continued playing cards out of hours, etc....

But, that's what you do to survive, when you're not in pain. We 'had to' rebel because the general way of being treated / being expected to behave just drove us nuts. And as for the three servings of rice and fish a day...

I came out last Thursday - four days ago - my arm still isn't 100% okay and today I got put on a months course of antibiotic tablets (oh joy) - and I still feel a bit virusy from last week. Plus there is the chance the abscesses will come back - but hopefully they won't. I don't fancy going through all that pain and inconvenience again - to say nothing of loss of earnings.

And, upon coming out, I realised what being institutionalized actually meant. I was in such a daze for about 1.5 days. Suddenly I had to start thinking about buying groceries, paying bills, what to wear, cleaning, working, studying... all the 'real' things I'd not had to deal with in hospital. In fact, if I hadn't wanted to, I wouldn't have had to have made a single decision about anything in the 12 nights I was in as everything was to a pre-determined schedule.

So.

In the last post I wrote 'sometimes I love Japan'. Of course, the flip-side is sometimes I fucking well don't love Japan. Like now.

I'm all about health, work, study right now. Nothing else seems to exist outside of this tiny little bubble.

The problem that was treated went away for a few days and then came back. On my arms this time.

I went back to the same hospital that treated it before yesterday, today and tomorrow. More tests. Different diagnoses. More ultra strong drips.

I googled. Their diagnoses don't sound like what I have. But I'm no doctor. Interestingly, one of my flatmates, who had one lesion, and absolutely nothing else in common with whatever I have - was diagnosed as having the same thing.

I don't trust them. I think they don't know what they are talking about. Other people think they don't know what they are talking about. My insurance company has recommended a good doctor for me to see. I've made an appointment to see him on Monday.

Quotes from the doctors included:

'I didn't expect this to come back'.
'It's life threatening'.
'It's much more serious than it looks'.
'It could spread to your whole body.'
'If you were Japanese we'd admit you into the hospital.'

The best one though involved something I'm not divulging on here for various reasons. I was given a certain result yesterday that said I had, let's call it 'x'. The test for x had been done two weeks ago. When they handed me the result the penny didn't drop. Once I got home the penny dropped.

Conversation this morning with the doctors (and now they're giving me their most senior docs):

'Can I just check this test was done two weeks ago?'
'Yes, that's right.'
'Why didn't you tell me? Why didn't you treat this? In England x is an extremely serious condition.'
'In Japan we don't think x is serious'

[Side note, in Australia, Taiwan, America, etc x is seen as a serious condition. More evidence the doctors don't know what the hell they are on about.]

The doctor I saw one of the times before (I've seen a few docs there) said:

'It's normal for people with eczema to have x, so I didn't think it was important to tell you.'

I bloody well googled the connection of eczema to x. There's a known link. There's a good possibility in certain people. But there is no 'normal' about it. And it bloody well still needs treating.

Am fuming a little, as you can see.

And I miss the NHS. I really miss the NHS.

The Good and The Bad

Sometimes I love Japan. I have a crap wallet. Well, it's not that crap, just a tad overstretched from carrying too many loyalty cards, receipts, etc. (Know what I mean?) Only now it's pretty empty - which means things keep falling out of it.

Today my Suica (travel card - with about 2,000 yen of credit), my hospital loyalty / membership / donno what it actually is card and a bookshop loyalty card fell out... somewhere in Saitama - there were a few options. I checked with the supermarket - no, I went to check in the station - knowing I'd not have a chicken's chance in hell (probably) of finding them if they weren't there... and behold - they were! So... thank you to whoever handed them in and thank you nice mr. station man for being patient with my Japanese, miming and mobile phone's dictionary!

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I think I probably mentioned the first skin infection totally cleared up for about three days before I got the second one (in different places)? Well - and I've now got a months worth of antibiotics in my system (grrrrr) - the second one cleared up about four days ago but I've today found another couple of places where it feels / seems the infection has REappeared. It can't have - there is no way I can have more antibiotics. What on earth is going on with my immune system?

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Fun and games at work:- Briefly, I've been wanting to get out of my current contract for ages and back into the part of the company I was originally working for. I told by boss yesterday. He said he would 'consider it'. Them be fighting words..... Them were fighting words. My response wasn't as polite or as patient as it probably should have been. Neither was my follow-up email notifying him in writing.

I may start looking for a new job if this simple request isn't granted. Not exactly what I want to do now I've got the Diploma going on, but still.

A brief whimsical moment...

I remember sitting on the beach on New Years Day, feeling so so happy and thinking that a wonderful first day of the year must be a good omen for the year to come.

Funny how things don't work out, isn't it?

Tonight I finish my antibiotics after a MONTH of taking the bloody things in various forms and strengths. I'm suffering side effects that I'm not enjoying and taking lots of good things to try and counter that. I've spent most of this year in pain or in and out of doctors. What a start!

But now the infection has gone and my system can start to get back to normal. I hope.

Tokyo is cold. Not as cold as it was in December, I don't think, but still cold. My plan for the rest of the winter is to stay in my room except when I have to leave - work, food shopping (but that can be done on the way home from work), etc. And this year is all about studying - and trying to survive the diploma!

No more drips!

Today I had another blood test and most of the levels were back to normal, thankfully, which means no more antibiotic drips, I've been put onto tablets now.

The pain is almost completely gone and hopefully everything will start healing soon.

Phew!

Really not loving these hospital appointments

So. Am still in pain (maybe slightly less) and am still feeling sick from the antibiotic drip.

And I'm not convinced I'm getting the best treatment because a) I don't have much faith in Western medicine and b) I have even less faith in the Japanese medical system after nearly 4.5 years of hearing stories about it.

Today I had to wait 1.5 hours in the out-patients clinic. This is meant to be a first-come first-served thing but I think people were being allowed to go through before me. Now of course I'm not hinting that I was getting different treatment because I was a foreigner but....

Went in. Had been thinking about what they'd done. I don't want to gross out Timourous Beastie again so I'll skip details. But let's just say, I'd decided THEY had been skipping on something they should have been doing. So I made them do it today. And once I'd told them to do it, the penny dropped that it made sense.

The nurse then doing the new dressing was crouching down with his head about 6 cms from the floor. I pointed out it might be a lot easier for him if my leg was on a chair. He almost panicked that I'd made this suggestion but seemed much happier.

Common. Sense. How can so many people lack in common sense? It stuns me.

They then took two attempts (read, two needles) to get the IV line into my arm. When I tried to ask if the nausea and the itching were normal side effects they said they wanted to stop giving me the drip. I told them there was no way they were going to stop it (well, I don't want to have a break, see it get worse, see the doctor on Tuesday and THEN have another few days of this shit).

So, yes. I am still extremely miserable and fed up with all of this.