Hello there!
Welcome to part 2 of a 2-part series on the topic: My first medical appointment in Japan. 🙂
If you have not read part one yet, read it by clicking here.
And now, WITHOUT FURTHER ADO, let’s get started!
My first weeks in Japan
I got here in Japan on January 12th, 2023. I was so excited! Everything was so different, and I WAS EAGER TO explore the country as much as I could before RESUMING my work routine in February, which would DEMAND THAT I stay at home more.
And that’s what I did. I tried all the different kinds of food I LAID MY EYES ON, I visited as many places as I could, and I PUT ON A FEW EXTRA KILOS as a consequence. 😁
Researching the healthcare system in Japan
It was only after my regular work routine started that I began RESEARCHING the healthcare system in Japan and the experiences of other FOREIGNERS receiving treatment here. And that’s when I CAME ACROSS a video on Youtube of a Brazilian woman who had had more than one terrible experience with healthcare in Japan. To see it, click here. Her account of her experience really shocked me.
Another thing I learned about healthcare in Japan is that here, doctors prefer women to GIVE BIRTH NATURALLY and you will only HAVE A C-SECTION if there is some problem that might make a natural birth risky. I understand that it’s healthier for both the mom and the baby to have a natural birth, but what about women (like me) who are afraid of experiencing any kind of pain and would prefer a C-section because of that? It seems that in some hospitals, their wishes are not heard.
I know that the same APPLIES TO hospitals in Brazil. There are the ones in which the patients’ opinions are taken more in consideration than others. But BASED ON MY RESEARCH, there were more women who had a bad experience than a good experience with healthcare here. That scared me.
Another thing that worried me is that in Japan, there seemed to be more restrictions on having a companion with you during DOCTOR APPOINTMENTS and exams, possibly because the COVID situation was not fully over yet. As I cannot speak Japanese well, I was worried that DEPENDING ON the seriousness of my situation, I might have to be treated by a specialist who didn’t speak English. As a result, I would not be able to communicate with them well or have my husband with me to act as the interpreter.
So, what was the result of all that research? It made me DREAD seeing a doctor here in Japan. I was afraid of the worst: that I might have to undergo the same kind of exam that my mother had in Brazil, or worse, have to HAVE A SURGERY here, in a country where, based on my research, sensitivity to pain was not considered important.
You might be reading this post and thinking, ‘This girl is too weak!’ Haha, yeah, well, I guess I am. 😅
2 years later…
Yes, that’s right, you read the heading above correctly. It was only 2 years later that I MUSTERED THE COURAGE I needed to address that problem.
DESPITE my fear, I knew that the longer I POSTPONED checking my thyroid the riskier it would be. Not a week WENT BY without me feeling my throat in fear of finding a LUMP. But it felt like something had to happen to SPUR ME INTO ACTION. And that ‘something’ EVENTUALLY happened.
A few days after New Year’s, a friend from Tokyo came to spend a few days with us. He had the flu, and we INEVITABLY contracted it from him. Around 3 or 4 days after dealing with the flu symptoms, I started to feel a lump on my neck, JUST BELOW my CHIN.
That worried me. On the same day, at night, while I was in the bathroom getting ready to start FLOSSING MY TEETH and thinking about the lump on my neck, I got a notification on my phone that read “Don’t die”. It was a notification about a new documentary AIRING on Netflix. I took that as a sign that I could WAIT NO LONGER.
After getting my teeth cleaned, I started looking online for a clinic where I could have my thyroid checked and where I could use English to communicate with the doctors. I found one pretty fast and went on to check the REVIEWS. Since there were a lot of them and they were mostly positive, I decided to make an appointment there.
When I accessed their website, I saw that everything was in Japanese, THOUGH, so I asked my husband to MAKE AN APPOINTMENT for me. He called the clinic and scheduled an appointment for the next day.
Going to the clinic
My appointment was scheduled for 5:40 p.m. The waiting room was full of women. That was not a surprise, since I had learned during my research that women have 10 times the risk of having some type of thyroid problem compared to men. I also learned that 1 in every 8 women will have some thyroid condition at some point in their lives. If you want to know more about it, here’s a short article about for you to read (click here).
When we got there, the receptionist gave us A FORM TO FILL OUT with my information. Since she gave us a form in Japanese, my husband helped me to fill it out. I don’t know if they had forms in English, too. Probably not.
After that, I was called to have my BLOOD PRESSURE checked and my BLOOD DRAWN to check my thyroid hormone levels. As you already know, I’m a SCAREDY-CAT when it comes to medical procedures. I believe that’s why my blood pressure was 14 OVER 8 – the highest it’s ever been. Every other time I checked it before, it was around 11 over 7 or 12 over 8.
Next, I had an ULTRASOUND of my thyroid. As I saw my thyroid appear on the blue screen of the monitor while the doctor was performing the test, I kept asking God for there to be nothing wrong with it. I believe that we only GO THROUGH THE SITUATIONS that we’re meant to go through, and that no amount of praying can change that, but it’s just more comforting to actively do something and ask God for what we hope for than to do nothing.
Between those two exams, the doctor called me to ask me why I was there, how I was feeling, to check my previous exam results (we had to use Google Lens, since the results were in Portuguese), and she also palpated my thyroid.
By the time the doctor called me to her office again, which was less than 30 minutes later, I was already feeling calmer. She had all the results of my tests in her hands and she was ready to explain them to me.
She told me that my hormone levels are lower now than they were in the previous exam results, but they are still higher than they should be. She also said that the levels of ANTIBODIES against thyroid tissue are much higher than they should be, which made her REACH THE CONCLUSION that I have chronic thyroiditis. In other words, Hashimoto’s disease.
She also said that UNLIKE the previous ultrasound I had done 2 years earlier, there’s nothing wrong with the blood circulation in my thyroid, and there were no nodules. You cannot imagine how relieved my husband and I felt when we heard that!
The doctor told me that the lump I had felt on my neck was actually a SWOLLEN lymph node. She explained that it was swollen because it as fighting an infection or inflammation – which MADE PERFECT SENSE since I was RECOVERING FROM THE FLU.
TO MY UTTER SURPRISE, the doctor also told me that I should avoid consuming high levels of iodine because, in this specific thyroid condition, iodine DOES MORE HARM THAN GOOD.
That means that I was doing the complete opposite of what I should have been doing. I was trying to consume as much iodine as possible. Do you remember the ‘Don’t die sign’ I received when I was cleaning my teeth? I think this is why I received it. If I had not received it, I would probably have taken much longer to see a doctor and learn that I was not doing the right thing to take care of my thyroid, and my situation might have been much worse BY THEN.
According to the doctor, I don’t need to take any medication RIGHT NOW (UNLESS I want to get pregnant, WHICH IS NOT THE CASE), but I should REPEAT THE EXAMS in 6 months to see how things are.
That was my first medical appointment in English, and while I was leaving the clinic, I felt so GRATEFUL FOR the fact that I could speak English and be able to talk to the doctor myself. The doctor was very kind and answered all my questions, and I left her office feeling well taken care of. I don’t know if I would have felt the same way if I hadn’t been able to communicate with her.
Celebration time!
When we left the clinic, we wanted to celebrate! We wanted to take a walk and find a cozy coffee shop to have coffee and eat something delicious.
Because it was cold outside, we TOOK OUR WALK in an UNDERGROUND SHOPPING ARCADE full of shops, restaurants, coffee shops, and people having fun. I don’t know if you know, but eating out is very common in Japan. Much more than in Brazil. So, all the restaurants and coffee shops had clients, especially the most popular ones.
We decided to eat at a coffee shop called Vie de France. We’ve been there a few times already and we love it. It’s great because it has lots of different kinds of bread, and that’s something that popular coffee shops like Starbucks don’t have.
We drank wonderfully warming coffee, ate delicious BREAD BUNS, and talked a lot about movies, life, and our plans for the future! We were seated SIDE BY SIDE in front of a glass wall so we could watch people GO BY while we ate and talked. I love to sit in places where I can watch people MOVE AROUND while I eat, and my husband already knows that. 🤭
We only remembered to take a picture when we were leaving already. That’s the picture you’ve seen ABOVE.
THAT’S IT for today’s post. I hope you enjoyed practicing your English with it. 😊 Make sure to leave a comment below to practice your writing skills a little.
See you in the next post!
Eliana Capiotto
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