Medical matters

I feel as though medical/paramedical stuff has taken a significant chunk out of our last two months in Australia. Looking back at the diary, we've had at least one thing almost every week, sometimes more than one. Some of it is routine, others...not so much.

Here's much of what we've had:

• two year medicals (OMF requirement and has resulted in some of the below)
• psychological debrief
• blood tests
• mammogram and PAP smear
• iron infusion for me
• several physio appointments for two of us for various minor injuries or niggles
• immunisation (catch-up for the boys)
• skin infection necessitating antibiotics
• three x-rays
• optometrist (two of us thus far)
• dentist (just our eldest, the rest of us did this before we left Japan)

Still to come:

• another blood test for me following up on the iron infusion and who knows if that might lead to more appointments
• more physio appointments
• wisdom teeth removal
• more psychologist appointments
• and who knows how many more injuries/illnesses that will need attending to, our youngest is on quite a run at present.

It takes time. I have to admit to being a bit over all the driving. Yes, driving in Brisbane/Ipswich is much easier than Tokyo, however there's so much of it. Most of the above has meant at least 20 minutes drive each way (some more than double that).

And for the most part we've not been significantly unwell. I'd hate to see the list if we were!

It is nice to be doing this in Australia, though. Much of the above would look quite different in Japan, even if you take away the language barrier. For example:

• Mammograms and PAP smears only happen once every two years. To get it you have to be a certain age and go in a certain month. For example, in our local area ladies in their odd years ( eg. 41, 43) who are born Jan to March can get these tests done in June, if you are born April to June you can have them in July. (These details may or may not be exactly right, but they give you the idea). If you miss that month of that year, you have to wait two more years unless you have a symptom that needs investigating! This means that people like us who aren't necessarily in the country on the right year or in the right month can fall through the cracks.
• You can't just walk into a physio (PT for Americans), it is much more medically focused, though I've heard that in Tokyo that there are therapy places you can go, I'm not sure if you don't need a doctor's referral. Thankfully we've never desperately needed that, except for the one time I had a very stiff neck and saw an orthopedic doctor at a local hospital who referred me to a physio in the hospital.
• The immunisation schedule is very different. The shots our boys are having aren't regularly available in Japan.

Does it sound like I'm whinging? I hope not. I'm really glad that we have such ready access to good medical care. I'm just tired of it taking up so much time. But really, compared to what some people deal with on a daily basis, this is nothing. It's good to stay in touch with my friends who have significant disability in their families, it helps me to stay grounded. 

But when people say, "What are you doing while you're in Australia?" It's hard not to think about how much time we've had to spend doing these self-care things, things that aren't really considered "work", but are taking up significant time and energy. 

And of course we're still adjusting to having one car, two people working from home, having a school run to do twice a day, and a fifth person who occasionally needs use of the car (and a parent) but who lives 30 minutes away! This afternoon, as we tried to coordinate our schedule to accommodate one car, a doctor's visit, an optometrist's visit, an x-ray, school run, and a simple trim, I exclaimed, "I just want to go 'home'!" Where there is no school run, the doctor and x-ray, would have been within 1 km from home, and I can independently ride to the hairdresser.