Back to reality. Basking in the desired beauty of my last post, I am jolted back to real life with my real kids...which happened to include a really black eye this week. Was punching buttons on their Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots enough? Nope, they had to try punching each other out...for real.
With this mommy's heart beating to be safe, not sorry, I brought our son in to see the doctor this morning. One of the hardest things about living overseas as a missionary is dealing with health issues in a foreign language and in a foreign culture. Even after 14 years of carving out a semi-doable-daily-life here, going to the doctor can still be overwhelming, confusing and frustrating.
Since we are relatively new to Tokyo we are still trying to figure out where to go, for what, and when. In Japan, health clinics are very specialized. So, instead of just going in to see your general practitioner, you play doctor and diagnose. Do you need to go to the internal medicine clinic, ENT, eye clinic, dermatologist...? If you guess wrong, then your money and time will be wasted and you will be told that you can't be treated and you need to go somewhere else.
These little clinics can be closed any day of the week (or even for half of the day), depending on varying schedules. Oh, and each clinic will be closed for anywhere from 1 -3 hours for lunch. No appointments to guarantee you'll be seen, just walk in and wait (and wait and wait...).
Back to today and my wanna-be-boxer. I was so thankful that my missionary friend found this little eye clinic near the boy's school. It was clean and professional (not always the case) and the doctor was very thorough and had up-to-date equipment (not always the case). Even though she spoke Japanese a mile a minute, I could understand most of her explanation (definitely not always the case). Thankful for a positive prognoses, "It looks worse than it is".
