Think about CANCER⑰~An episode in a hospital

[bogo]Today, as I often do, I’d like to write about an encounter I had during my recent hospitalization.

Being in hospital can be so boring as to drive you up the wall. In the case of illness in internal medicine, we often can not move from the bed and there may not be much contact contact with other people. In the case of surgery, however, once the affected part is cut away, patients don’t have much to do except wait for the doctors and nurses to come round and check on them. All they can do is wait for the wound to heal with the passage of time.

In my case, after the operation in the morning, I had readings of body temperature and blood pressure every hour. And it was only one day that I could not eat meals and had continuous intravenous drips for nutritional support.

The next morning, when the drip was removed, I was allowed to walk alone freely in the hospital after practicing walking with a nurse only once. Indeed there are many people walking around in the hospital towing a pole with a tube.

In the hospital, there is a little space next to the nurse center, with a notice calling it a “Day Room”, and there are several tables and chairs. It is used when the staffs and the patients have a meeting and also when the visitors and the patients meet. Also, the patient may drink tea or read a book there, there is a free hot water supply and tea service. Most patients take advantage of this space because they feel depressed at having to just lie in bed.

It may have been the second day after my operation, I went to the Day Room. A foreigner with gray hair was eagerly looking at his personal computer. I had heard that foreigners also often use this hospital, but I never thought that I would meet a foreigner in the same ward. I casually asked him. “Do you still work in such a place as this?”

Then he replied, “I am checking my website ” and showed me the screen. I could see English sentences and many photos uploaded. I found that he is a New Zealander and has been a professor, at the College of Economics at Nihon University for over 20 years. He is primarily engaged in English communication, but on the other hand he is also a filmmaker and he seems to be well versed in the graphic arts and photography.

When I was looking at his seminar site, I found out that he has also published books such as dictionaries and was a highly educated person. He asked if I have a site. I did not hesitate to show him my “Shingu Net.” When I explained about the concept and some contents of the site, he became very interested.

He says that he is interested in Japanese ancient documents, and he often visits historical sites. He asked me if there is a museum in Shingu, I replied that there is no museum but there is the Haruo Sato Library that was once Sato’s home and was moved from Tokyo. Haruo Sato is a famous writer who received the Order of Culture and a collection of documents related to him are kept there.

Some time ago Kumano Kodo near Shingu City was registered as a World Heritage site, and recently many people have been visiting our hometown including foreign tourists.

If you visit Shingu someday, I will gladly show you around and even if I cannot return home, you can count on me to introduce you to some of my friends who will help you. As I explained a bit about Haruo Sato and Kenji Nakagami and others, he asked some more questions. In the manner of a university professor’s questioning, he asked me many things.

We exchanged our business cards, and thought it would be nice to meet each other again someday. When I showed him Shingu Net, he asked me if there was no English version. I replied “Not yet!”

If there is one thing to regret about my site “Shingu net”, it is all written in Japanese and doesn’t have an English version. If it has an English version, foreigners can easily understand the contents and enjoy it more. It might be time to think about the English version.

If such things happen, I concluded that it’s not so bad to be hospitalized occasionally.

日本語・English

(T. Nishi)