First there was the Warfarin disaster after Korea. Now, this.
About 11 PM last night I started feeling a sharp pain in my side. I'd eaten some chicken wings in Nagoya with a friend on my way down to Osaka, and I figured that I must have swallowed a bone or something. Unfortunately, the pain just got worse and worse. Even more seriously, I drank a lot of water to try to flush whatever I was feeling out of my system. But drinking a full liter of water and not having to pee got me really, really scared - something was obviously wrong with my tubes.
About 5 AM I got sick of curling in the fetal position trying to fall asleep, walked to the nearest conbini, and said, "where's the nearest hospital with an emergency room"? The clerk found out, I hopped in a taxi, and I spent the next 8 hours enduring socialized medicine as they poked and probed to find out what was wrong with me.
The good: I'm not dying, and I'm not in danger of dying.
The bad: I have a kidney stone. This is a real vacation-dampener.
The not-so-bad: I can put off surgery/ultrasound until next week, once I get back to the states. So no out-of-pocket emergency surgery, thank Christ.
The awesome: Cute Japanese nurses feeling so sorry for the foreigner in their midst and the danger to his big American penis.
I am laughing about it right now but that's only because I haven't slept in 32 hours and the painkillers are still going strong. My next vacation is going to be to San Diego.
