Waiting to see a doctor

I recently went to the doctor. No, I'm not sick, just need to periodically pick up some preventer medication for my asthma. I've blogged a little about doctors in Japan before, but this time I got to take some photos.

I don't like going to the doctor here because you don't make an appointment, you just turn up and hope that the line isn't too long. That means that you sometimes get to sit for a lengthy period of time in a room full of sick people even if you aren't sick yourself. You see, Japanese tend to go to the doctor for small things like colds and temperatures. I've been told this is because of their history as a nation with TB and that that disease often begins with cold-like symptoms. 

In any case, it is not a nice place to hang around if you're just looking for some medication. It used to be that you could just drop in and put a request at reception for medicine and they'd shuffle it through to the doctor without having to see him. But they changed the rules. I'm thankful that my doctor will give me three inhalers at a time - which lasts 4-6 months depending on my health.

But before I get to the waiting, here is a photo of the bike-park. Does your doctor have a bike-park? My doctor does. He also has a 5-car car park (the white sign in the middle of the background is about that - it's down the road a little). If you come in your car and the car park is full then you have to use one of the pay-to-park car parks around. Something like a dollar for twenty minutes. 

Which brings me back to waiting. I arrived a bit after 10, hoping to miss the early morning rush and still be in time to get to the gym before they shut at 12.30. Big hopes! First I registered my arrival at the front desk. Then I sat down and pulled out some correspondence to do (I hate to sit, doing nothing). After I wrote three postcards I was called to the triage nurse, who took my temperature and noted I was not only very well, but only there to get medication to keep me well. She kindly allowed me to sit in this room, away from the sniffly waiting room. It is usually reserved for children waiting for immunisation, that sort of thing. I started out there alone, then one mother and baby and another mother with a baby arrived (the photo is of about half the room, but it wasn't a big room). Then they shuffled a man in for some kind of test - perhaps a cardiogram. So the three of us and two babies sat around in this intimate environment while someone had a test behind the curtain around the other bed in the room.

Bit by bit, the room emptied as the other ladies were seen brought back and sent out again. It was all rather weird. Eventually I was alone again in the room. By now the clock had edged up to 12 and I wondered if they'd forgotten me. 

Then they called me in. I spent a total of three minutes with the doctor, while he ascertained what I needed and that my lungs were clear. And was ejected back out into the sniffly waiting room. Where I sat again, awaiting my bill and script. Mercifully they didn't take too long on this. 

I gathered myself and marched down the road to this place. The chemist, or probably more correctly, the dispensary. I quickly snapped this photo with my phone, it isn't a good one. Basically another waiting room, with a window just to the right of the photo where you submit your script. Nothing like a chemist in Australia where you have trouble finding your way through all the products for sale in order to get to the counter. This is much more bare bones.

I did eventually get to the gym, just in time. Then rushed off to the post office and then a quick stop at the grocery store on the way home completed my journey - all by bike.

I do wish, though, that I'd not had to wait for two hours to see the doctor!