Health Check-Ups Make You Sick (Not for the Squeamish)

I went to the doctor's today for the first time since I was a child, to have a full health check-up no less, known in Japanese as the kenkou-shindan.

It's quite something, your first full health-check up. First off, it costs a lot. I did it all in Japanese through a regular Japanese clinic, and it cost 42,000 yen, which is about 305 euro or 370 dollars. Had I gone to a fancy English-speaking clinic aimed at the Azabu expat crew, it would have been almost double.

The kenkou shindan requires some interesting preparation. You can't eat after nine p.m. the night before, and you can't drink fluids after midnight that night. You have to fill in an epic, epic questionnaire about your health conditions. And then there's the small matter of having to provide and package a sample of your own, er, stool. All of our modern world's great technological advances don't make this task any easier. Your panicked fumblings in the bathroom this morning are testament to that. They'd be great slapstick entertainment for others. You semi-recognise this yourself. Somewhere in a toilet in North Tokyo, you've become Peter Sellars.

You're also advised to be liberal with your weeing on the morning of the test. You take this advice seriously.

And it's just as well. On the morning of the test, you show up at the clinic at the appointed time with your completed questionnaire and your jar of stool. You're given a locker key, told to change into the hospital clothes, and then to wait in the waiting area. You do this, apprehensively. Then a nurse comes in, calls your name, hands you a plastic cup, points you to the toilets. Off you go, son.

Your mission is to fill the cup to the 25 ml mark. No more, no less, and no warm up. This is straight from the first whistle, serious stuff. Errors will not be tolerated. You're in a dark toilet, pissing seriously into a paper cup. Accuracy and control is everything. You're Daley Thompson, competing in the javelin at the start of the Olympic Decathlon. Happily, compared to the sideshow that went on vis a vis the stool sample, you pass this little test with accomplishment and ease. You return from the toilets triumphant, like a proud young hunter returning with his catch. And suddenly the tides have turned and now you're Spartacus, letting your people live.

You're then weighed and measured, and your body fat is recorded. You regret them now, those Christmas beers. Then comes the eye test. Migi Hidari Shita Ue. They always come in order. You're back on old ground again, Bill Murray from Groundhog Day.

The hearing test is like being on a quiz show. You put on some metal headphones and sit inside a telephone-booth-esque cubicle. You're given a buzzer. When you hear a sound, you're to press the buzzer as fast as you can. The theory is this: the longer it takes you to press the buzzer, the worse your hearing is. You don't have to be a genius to work out how to cheat. Your competitive edge and the delusion you're on Blankety Blank take over. Buzz! Buzz! Buzz! You're on a roll here. You think you might have won a checkbook and pen. But by the time they let you out again, you're Donny from Magnolia, and it's not going to stop. Terry Wogan, unfortunately, has already left.

You're then told to lie down on a bed and open your gown. They put clamps on your ankles and wrists, and some electrode-like things on various points on your chest. Immediately you think two things: torture and bondage. In truth, it's the closest you've been to either, but the similarities are far too striking to ignore. Tabloid thinking. At least half the world probably thinks the same. Now you're Dustin Hoffman from Marathon Man, or you're in a Ken Russel film with his namesake Theresa.

Then come the x-rays. You ask if you need to take your top off for the chest x-ray. The doctor reckons there's no need. You're intelligent and wise, like Trigger from Only Fools and Horses.

And then you come to the part where you have to drink barium so they can check for abnormalites in your upper gastrointestinal tract. This is the dreaded ii no kensa. You can read all about the wonders of the barium swallow here. I might just add that drinking something with its own entry in the periodic table of the elements is disgusting, and in combination the moving torture machine they put you on immediately afterwards and spin you around in all directions on, it doesn't help the tranquility of your once calm and healthy stomach. You're Buck Rogers, returned from strange adventures in the 25th century, down but not out.

Then, to top it all, they take you outside and make you take a laxative.

You're nearly finished. You have a blood test. After the barium and spacecraft thing, an injection is nothing. You look the nurse straight in the eye as the tubes fill up with your crimson blood. You're Clint Eastwood now. No problem, this once potentially squeamish stuff. Then you go to visit the doctor. She tells you the lump on your leg is not cancerous and probably just fat. You feel relieved, but you keep the facade of nonchalance.

And then the show is over. The 3-hour health check up has been finished in 1 hour 15 minutes. It's businesslike, this production-line health check, for profit in every sense. You don't mind. You collect your results in a couple of weeks.

You get dressed, pay up and stagger back to your office. Your stomach feels sick, and you sense a certain laxative starting to kick in. Somehow, amid the frequent rushed trips to the bathroom, you find it hard to concentrate for the rest of the day. Fittingly, life has turned full circle. This morning you were Peter Sellars with the bathroom equivalent of writer's block. Now you're one of those who ate the beans in Blazing Saddles.

Posted by Setsunai at January 13, 2006 3:49 PM