I woke up repeatedly last night with a soreness in my chest, underneath my right shoulder blade. It wasn’t really painful, just sore. I rolled over and it would be fine, but eventually my body would turn over again in my sleep and then it would wake me up.
It wasn’t until I woke up in the morning and I really thought about what it might be that I got worried. What if it was a heart attack? What if I have pneumonia? What if I drop dead while teaching a class? Every time I take in a deep breath it hurts.
I jumped on the internet and found some information about chest pain, and it looks like I didn’t have a heart attack, and more likely I probably pulled a muscle inside my chest while doing pushups. I do 100 half-pushups each night before bed, so maybe that was it.
Anyway, I went to school and I was sitting around talking with the history teacher and I mentioned to him that I had a soreness in my chest, and that I can’t breathe in completely without pain. Within minutes I was sent off to the nurse’s office, and we checked my temperature, had me gargle a strange liquid, and she even put some strange ointment on my back. I distinctly got the impression that these were the kind of treatments more for my peace of mind than for my actual health, but what the heck.
Mr. Hayashi was making lots of jokes, but I think later he started to think that it would look bad if I had a seizure on his watch, so he said that he would take me to the doctor after school. My experiences with Japanese doctors haven’t been great – Andy’s trip to the doctor seemed to be a ridiculous exercise. Still, I figured it was better to go.
Teachers kept coming by my desk to make sure I was OK, and everyone was very sympathetic. I’m not sure how things were getting translated, but everyone was nice enough. After school we went to the “school doctor”, a local guy that probably retired twenty years ago.
He did some listening with the stethoscope (good idea), and then asked a lot of questions of Mr. Hayashi in Japanese. I answered dutifully, and without even touching my skin he said that I was sleeping in too cold an environment. He prescribed a pile of pills and then sent me on my way. I’m going back on Monday to pay the bill – that should be the most interesting part of the whole experience.
Mr. Hayashi felt bad and took me to the post office where a package was waiting for me – my new mp3 player that my folks were kind enough to receive and re-send to me here in Japan. On the way home Mr. Hayashi was talking about his next party in Kobe – a cheer-you-up for Mr. Kimura in a bar called the “Old England”. I was there a long time ago with Nell and Antoine, and they reamed us on price – but Mr. Hayashi has arranged a special deal. Here’s how Mr. Hayashi described it: “It is all you can drink as long as you order beer. But you can’t order some beers. And no wine. Otherwise you can drink all you want.”
Mr. Hayashi also suggested that I ask one of the single teachers in our group, Miss Kotera, to join us. Since it was a suggestion I said that I would take that under advisement. There is another level of something going on here, but I’m not sure what it is.
I’m going to take the history teacher’s advice and go out to get some comfort food tonight. I’m off to the yakitori in the next hour or so to get some grub. I’m not drinking alcohol tonight, so I hope they have juice or something…
