The Medical Check-Up.

So, every student entering OU has to do a medical check-up upon entering University. I wasn't sure what it would entail, and I was becoming nervous because 1) DO NOT LIKE HOSPITALS and 2) DO NOT LIKE BEING NAKED IN FRONT OF STRANGERS and usually medical check-ups involve all of the above. They also gave us this thing called a Pee Pole with directions to pee into it the morning of the exam. Yes. Carry your urine around with you all day. No, not going to happen. They don't tell us what the urine is for, though I imagine it's for a drug test. Or perhaps pregnancy test. Or perhaps both. That's a big difference between the U.S. and Japan. My urine might just be refuse waste, but it's my urine and you can't have it without telling me what you're going to do with it. In the U.S., I would have to sign a form consenting to whatever kind of test they were going to do on it. Here, they took my pee and I have no idea why. Anyway, I carried the (empty) Pee Pole with me to campus this morning and then utilized the device right before heading to the medical center. So yes, for five minutes, I had pee in my pocket. Love it.

M & K went also, which was good because I really needed the moral support. They had us fill out a pretty standard questionnaire (family medical history, personal medical history, any problems you want to discuss, etc.) Didn't ask if I was pregnant or lactating, though, which is standard in the U.S. We turned in our forms and they gave us a card. The card we would carry on our persons through the various examinations, and the doctors would insert it into the machine before running anything. All the outcomes of each examination are logged on that card. So, we turned in our pee pole, our questionnaire, and got our cards. On the sheet that we received during oritentation (the one that informed us we had to take a medical exam), it read that during the medical exam we would have to be completely naked. This had me in a tizzy, but in the end, nothing could be further from the truth. They said we could wear a plain t-shirt during the chest x-ray (no logos or print on the shirt) and in fact, if you didn't have such a shirt, they provided one for you. That was the most intrusive part of the entire check-up, and it wasn't intrusive at all.

Anyway, we were herded to a line to enter a tent which was connected to an RV where our chest x-rays would be taking place. We entered the tent (boys in one, girls in another) and were able to remove our bras under our shirts. They took our bags and such, and then one by one, we took off our shoes, slipped into 'house slippers' and went into the bus. The doctor showed me how to stand for the x-ray, I was completely clothed - t-shirt, jeans, everything, totally comfortable. He took the x-ray then there was some confusion. It's no secret that I'm a big girl, and apparently their machine was not built for folks like me, so they moved me to a different bus with different machinery. This was fine except during, they had me wait and I had no idea why I was waiting. Was there something wrong? Did the x-ray have bad results? Did my pee test have weird results? I took some medicine this morning for my cough that one of the Korean girls gave me, and it was in modern medicine packaging so I was sure it was fine, but still. What's wrong?! Finally they took me to the other bus (after letting me put my overshirt back on - I had worn a white undershirt specifically for the x-ray today) and there they brought someone who spoke English who explained to me that actually, the machinery in the second bus was very old and so they wanted me to come back on a different day to do the chest x-ray inside the medical building on-campus, where the machinery was much newer. Whatever.

After that it was height and weight, then blood pressure, and vision test. They told me that everything was good; my urine test was good, my vision was good, my blood pressure was good, etc. So now I have a clean bill of health, well save for the x-ray, which I'll come back for on another day. In the end, the check-up was absolutely no big deal and I feel a little silly for worrying about it. Still, I am in a different country and culture and one can never be sure what a "medical check-up" will entail until you've actually done it.

For now I am going back to campus because I feel like crap. Maybe I should have told them I have a cold. I would kill for some Chloraseptic spray right now, my throat hurts. Waaaaaah :(