I've been feeling sick for a few days. My ears have been hurting for a while, and I've been occasionally getting nosebleeds. Figuring it was a lack of humidity in my apartment, I got a humidifier for my room and started keeping a pot of water on my heater. The heater lets the water slowly evaporate out, you see. Perfect. Also I did laundry a couple of times. The heater evaporates the moisture from my damp clothes and works as a really good humidifier.
However.
I still got nosebleeds. My ears still hurt. I got headaches and my throat was kinda scratchy. Wasn't remotely hungry about three out of seven nights.
My supervisor thought I may have a middle-ear infection, because my ears hurt and I've been getting nosebleeds. Apparently people with middle-ear infections get nosebleeds easily. So he found me a clinic and last weekend I got up early and went to an EENT in Obihiro. Yep, I drove an hour to go to a doctor on a weekend because my hospital here in town is closed except for emergencies on the weekends. I could've gone during the week but I don't want to miss class, you see. I adore my students and I'd feel bad skipping out. Except for a week in Okinawa*--see ya!
Anyway, Obihiro actually turned out to be a really good day!! ^-^ On the way I got an invite for lunch from a friend who lives in Obihiro. He's an older gentleman who's really, really nice. His nickname in the group is Satan because they all say he looks like Satan. However, Satan in katana sounds an awful lot like Saturn (or satin), so I think of him more as Saturn-san.
A dinner group party at Sensei's house in October or November.
In the back from the left is Yko-san, Oda-san, and Sensei.
In the front from the left is Saturn-san, me, and Satou-san.
In the front from the left is Saturn-san, me, and Satou-san.
All the little old ladies are conspiring to hook me and Satou-san up.
They want him to teach me tennis. Inside I laugh.
Anyway.
So I go to the hospital, which is actually an EENT clinic. Coolies. The receptionist lady is rather impressed with my Japanese, however she goes through the sign in information sheet with me, which is probably a good thing. Even though I brought my electronic dictionary for the kanji, it would've taken me quite a few minutes to work through it, and it was much easier just answering verbal questions. Eventually I see the doctor.
Dude. EENTs here are so. Cool. They did the usual let-me-look-at-your-ear thing, and he knew immediately that I had tubes in my ears when I was little. All the doctors know this immediately, and I was always vaguely puzzled. I mean, I knew I had scarring on my eardrums, but is it really that obvious? I finally have my answer, and the answer is yes.
I got to look at the inside of my own ears.
How many people can say that? The scope thingy that he had had a teeeny tiny camera on it, and there were monitors on the walls so I could actually see what he was looking at. It was really nifty! And guess what? My eardrums are white. Apparently they're supposed to be pinkish or pink? But mine are like snow white. They are quite scarred. I've always had problems with my ears, but dayum.
The bummer is I didn't get to look up my nose. Boo. Ah well.
So the verdict was I don't actually have an ear infection. Probably I have an allergy to something else, possibly house dust or something, which caused the initial irritation and nosebleeds, and poking at my ears with q-tips to make sure I get all the moisture out of my ears just made my eardrums mad so they were pouting. Okay, that might be paraphrasing a bit. He gave me some allergy drops for my ears and away I went. Including medicine, the whole thing was less than 2000 yen, around maybe 20 dollars. Insurance kicks ass here.
Dude, there's a really cool system set up in the pharmacies here! You get a little book thing, kinda like a passport, that you show to the pharmacist when you give him your prescription, and they keep it updated with what medicine you were given when. We need something like that at home! It's so annoying when patients come up and you ask if they're currently taking anything, and they're all like, "Oh yeah, I'm on a little green one for blood sugar." Turns out it's something for blood pressure or something completely different, and it's orange. 9-9 So this little book thing is really, really cool.
After my visit I met up with Saturn-san for lunch. He works on Saturdays, but gets Sundays and Mondays off. We went to a pasta restaurant that was really yummy, actually. ^-^ He asked about my ears and my health, and during lunch we talked about a whole bunch of things. All in Japanese, of course. I'm at least getting much more comfortable in Japanese, if not necessarily better. Yay? We made a deal--if I'm still here in a few years, we'll travel the Silk Road, or travel to Southeast Asia sometime. xD
I walked him back to work and decided to do a bit of shopping while I was in town. I wanted a new hat and undershirts for the Ski Classes this week,* and I wanted to look at stationery supplies because I love stationery supplies. I went and bought my hat and went to the large shopping square that has Homac (kinda like Home Depot but less warehousey), Nitori (home goods, like dishes, blankets and futons, tables, etc), Daiso (100 yen shop, kinda like a dollar store, but generally better quality stuff, and -huge-), shoe store, Uniqlo (cheap clothing), and an electronics shop. I wanted to look for new windshield wipers at Homac before I did my clothes shopping at Uniqlo. My windshield wipers decided to die last week and left huge dirt smears right in front of my face. I found another set of wipers in the depths of my car (I'm still finding new things every now and again, and I've had it for five months) so I decided to change them out. I've never changed my own windshield wipers before, but hey, how hard can it be?
I forgot two very important things. 1. I'm a girl. 2. I'm clueless when it comes to cars. I couldn't figure out how to get the old ones off!! I was getting annoyed, so I decided I'd ask Mori-san or Ichi-san to look at it for me on Monday.
I heard someone say my name behind me. I turned around and lo, there's Ichi-san, pulling up in his car!
Now, you see, a few months ago I was driving home from Obihiro and decided to pull over on the side of the road to take pictures of the snow. It was all very pretty and all that jazz, and it had only recently begun to snow so it was still vaguely novel. I'd been standing there maybe three minutes by my car taking pictures when another car pulled into the divot in the road along with mine. I ignored them, figuring I'd be done soon enough and it was probably just someone on their cell phone. Driving and talking on the phone is illegal here, you see, so everyone pulls off to the side of the road to talk on the phone. But again I heard someone say my name so I looked up, and there was Ichi-san, walking towards me! He'd been driving home from Obihiro as well and saw me on the side of the road, recognized the car, and recognized me with enough time to pull over into the divot in the road in front of my car. xD
And now he'd done it again. I walked over to his car and asked him if he was following me. He said very clearly in English, "I am not a stalker!"
xD Oh, Ichi-san, I adore you sometimes.
And he changed my wipers for me! ^-^ We did a little window shopping together and then on a whim he took me on a drive to a frozen lake a couple of hours outside of Obihiro. It was really pretty, but really chilly, too. We made it just after sunset.
Isn't it pretty?
This is the cover photo on my facebook now. I love the pink and red behind the mountains. Oh yeah, we were a ways into the mountains. We saw a deer running along the road on the way to the lake.
There's a dam and you can go across it. We're going to go in the spring when the snow's gone.
Ichi-san decided that he needed to look cold in the photo. He hunched up specifically to take it. However, it was actually pretty cold.
We had to go through a pile of snow that came up to my knees to get to where it'd been cleared away. Things were fine going away from the car, but on the way back my foot sank in the snow and he had to help me out of it. xD My leg was white from the knee down.
When we made it back to Obihiro we went to dinner at Tacos Locos. I love that restaurant so much, which is vaguely odd because I very seldom eat Mexican food at home. I wish they'd use more sour cream, tho. =( But it's very delicious. ^-^
So I was taking my ear medicine properly, but if anything my ears just hurt worse. And Monday I woke up -exhausted-. Tuesday wasn't much better, and I got a raging headache all day. Yesterday I was so very tired even though I went to bed early and slept fine.
The Ski Class started yesterday! I wanted to go to it, so I bought a ski suit (over $200), a hat (over $50, especially when one factors in that I accidentally bought a kid's hat at first and had to buy another), gloves, the whole kit and kaboodle. I decided not to buy goggles because they're between $80-200 depending on which ones you get, and I didn't even know if I -liked- skiing yet. So I was really excited about this ski class thing, but at the same time I was quite scared. I'm a klutz, and new things scare me besides. But I was going to do it, dammit!
You'll notice there are no pictures. That's because not only did I not go, I was told specifically not to. xD
Yesterday morning, I was still super exhausted, right? Someone asked me how my cold was. Mori-san, my section head, immediately turned to me and said, "Cold? What cold?" See, once he found out it wasn't an ear infection, my supervisor decided I had a cold. So I told him that I wasn't feeling too hot but that I was fine, really. He asked what my symptoms were so I told him. Headache, tiredness, occasional nosebleeds--they've been getting better, I promise--Reika-san, the lady who sits next to me, pipes up and says 「血！水じゃなくて、血！」 "Note she says bleeds, not runs!" Nose is bleeding, not running.--sore throat, I was sneezing a lot last week.... Their eyes kept getting bigger and bigger. Finally Supervisor-san says, 「スキーやめてください。」"Please don't come to skiing." Basically, stay home and rest. The ski classes are at night, and it's really cold on the mountain besides, so stay home and rest.
They also asked if I'd been eating. Apparently saying I'm on a diet means I stop eating, period. Not true, I eat lunch every day at school, and I usually have something for dinner. True, a couple of times last week I didn't eat dinner.... I didn't tell them that.
They told me I should probably wear a mask when I go to school, because if I didn't have a cold already I'd probably catch one pretty easily. So I loaded up the car and drove out to Oda, wearing one of those bloody masks. I hate those things. I hate breathing in moist air. I twist mine in front of my ears so it gapes out a bit at the sides. I get more cool air, but in exchange I look like a duck. 9-9 Anyway, apparently I really didn't look well because the teacher asked me five times if I was sure I was up to going to class. I told her really I was fine, just tired.
When I got back to the office they sent me home. -.- So I went home after lunch yesterday and cleaned my living room on the off chance someone came by to check on me, then passed out on the sofa. I slept all afternoon, woke up around 7 to make dinner, and went back to bed around 930.
I felt a lot better today, but about an hour after waking up I started getting tired again, and my throat got kinda itchy. My head started to hurt, so I took some ibuprofen. When I got to school the teachers looked at me and told me to go home. Seriously, I wasn't even there twenty minutes. So I went back to the office.
On the way into the office I slipped in the parking lot and fell down. T-T
Everyone looked up when I came in and when I told them I got sent home, they told me to go to the doctor. They were appropriately sympathetic when I told them I fell down in the parking lot, too.
So I went to the doctor. Again. They did a flu test, which involves taking a long plastic qtip thingy and sticking it up your nose. Good god that thing is awful. x.x But they get results in 10-15 minutes. No flu, just a cold. So the doctor gave me cold medicine. I have two pills and a powder I'm to take three times a day with meals, so I have to eat at least three times a day. Yay?
The two green bottles are the ear drops the EENT gave me. One is already empty, the other about halfway, which is odd because the bottles have the same amount of liquid in them and I was to use them exactly the same--four drops in both ears, twice a day... How did one run out twice as quickly as the other? o.O Then there's the powder and the two tablets. Powder medicine is... weird. You're apparently supposed to tip all the powder into your mouth and drink it down with water? Was the general consensus of the internet. I don't know.
After the hospital I went to the store and bought new boots so I'll stop freaking falling down, and a bunch of food. So I have food now. Atsu-sensei from the middle school offered to bring me medicine and food if I wanted her to. x.x I'm fine, really! Well, more or less. I'm super tired, and I started to get cold despite the heater. So I'm going to go to bed now. Hopefully they won't send me home tomorrow, too.
Oh, the Okinawa trip! It's off. Well, offish. My dad's not coming anymore (I really don't like his new company sometimes), so instead I'm going to go for a few days on my spring break and then to Kyoto for a few days. I'll still take about a week off, but it'll be two weeks later and I'll go to Kyoto to visit Jun-kun as well.
Provided I haven't died by spring break.
<3 Take care, everyone!
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