Blood Stealers

I translated the Uchuu Kyoudai trailer, if anyone's interested.  :p

Now, a fair warning of some possible TMI.  Feel free to sit this one out.

A few weeks ago i got a postcard in the mail for a free woman's health-check, as well as a very cheap uterine cancer screening.  I've never been big on going in for check-ups, especially after i moved out and no longer had (decent) insurance.  But i figured since i'm paying the health insurance for it here, i may as well take advantage of it.  The women's clinic i went to is literally right behind my apartment building- the back side of the building is the view from my kitchen window.  So i waltzed on over at 11am, up to the reception desk and showed them my free health check card and told them i also wanted to do the uterine cancer check too.  The lady at the desk told me, "There's no female doctor today, is that alright?"  Sure, whatever, to me it's just as embarrassing either way.  She then gave me all these forms to fill out, which took probably about 20 minutes because all the forms were all in Japanese and reading kanji sucks, especially when it's listing a bunch of diseases...

I then got this card and was told to take it down to the weight/blood pressure corner down the hall to weigh and check my own blood pressure.  I had to stick it in this card reader, then go stand on the scale and stick my arm in one of those blood pressure reading machines, and it recorded all the info on my card.  How efficient! i thought.  Then it was time to pee in a cup.  Always a fun time.  But not nearly as fun as waiting.  Waiting. Waiting.  I thought i was going to die of boredom.  Or dehydration, since there were no signs of a drinking fountain anywhere, and it was all warm and stuffy in the waiting room too.  I think i was waiting for about an hour and a half until i was finally called in to one of the rooms to talk to the male doctor.  He was nice, spoke to me in English which was a bit of a relief as i was too irritated after waiting for so long to be bothered to try to understand any more Japanese.  Explained he was going to do the uterine cancer check.  Some lady nurse escorted me to the little exam room and had me prepare myself to sit in the crazy moving chair for the examination.  The chair went up and back and umm.. yeah.  There was a curtain hanging from the ceiling so that i couldn't see the doctor and he couldn't see me when he came in.  Well.. at least not my upper-half.  Kind of a nice courtesy i guess, but then i still have to go back to the next room and talk to him and it's just kinda like, Oh hey!  You were just over there looking at my hoo-haw.  Told me the results would be back in about 4 weeks and to come back then for the results.  Then it was back to waiting for about another hour for my "women's health check".

Which, come to find out, really meant "blood test".  Ohhhh, joy.  I was a baby and had to keep my head turned away the whole time and got nauseous from feeling the needle in my arm.  The nurse was pretty concerned and kept asking if i was alright or if i wanted to lie down.  I declined, and went back out to the waiting room once again.  Not what i was expecting... i was thinking there'd be a little more poking and prodding of boobies and other bits, and less needles and blood-taking.

At least my last wait was under 10 minutes, and i was called up to the counter to pay my 600yen for the cancer screening and they confirmed that i could come back in four weeks to get the results.  As long as it doesn't involve hours of waiting again!  Got to the clinic shortly after 11am, but didn't get home until almost 3pm.  I want to call it a waste of a day, but as i haven't had really any health checks for the good latter part of my life i guess it's not such a bad thing.