A report on Otosan is long overdue.  He is about to end his second stay in the hospital since his ambulance adventure in February.  His first stay lasted one month which sounds worse than it really was.  The Japanese love to stay in hospitals.  Some years back I broke my collarbone snowboarding in Japan.  I had to stay in the hospital for six days!  Otosan’s second stay will be ending after 15 days.

Otosan’s first stay in the hospital was a calm and quiet one.  He shared a room with people who had serious health issues and they didn’t make much noise.  This time his room is like a frat house from the movies.  There are four men living in the room but last time I went to visit seven dudes, from 55-80 were sitting around watching baseball and talking way to loud.  If they weren’t wearing hospital issue pajamas and a few of them hadn’t been wheeling around their IVs they could have been mistaken for a group of friends who went to Vegas for a weekend and piled into one room so they’d have more money for beer and gambling.  They were that rambunctious!  There is also one guy who has a high decibel snore.  He can sleep through the other guys shooting the breeze as they watch the ball game on one of the four TVs in the room.  I think that Otosan enjoyed the comraderie for a while but he is ready to leave.

Anyway, here’s the low down on what has happened:

• During his first hospitalization he was diagnosed with three broken ribs from his tumble walking to the bathroom in the dark.  He also had pneumonia.  Those two things healed faster than anyone could have expected.  The ribs fully healed in two weeks!
• He was officially labeled as having Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD). It wasn’t really a surprise.  He has been having trouble breathing the last few years and he has been a smoker for 55 plus years.  Japan is still a land of smokers and COPD seems to be a rite of passage for the farmers in our town.  Otosan is on the edge of needing oxygen at home but he really wants to avoid it.  I think deep down he thinks that his super recuperative powers are going to kick in and that his lungs are going to heal.  I don’t think that ever happens but for his sake I’m pulling for him.  Living life knowing that at some point you will be tethered to a tube of oxygen may be worse than actually being tethered to that oxygen tube although neither one sounds fun.  For now he is still fairly mobile.  Some days are better than others but on a good day he can walk for a few minutes without a problem but has been told to avoid walking up hills.  That’s hard to do when he doesn’t want to give up working and his fields are all on the side of a mountain.
• The doctor insisted on respiratory rehabilitation and that helped for a while.  He relearned how to use his abdominal muscles correctly and worked to loosen up his rib cage.  As breathing has become more difficult over the years and as he has lost muscle mass he became an upper chest breather.  That’s not a very efficient way to get enough oxygen in your body.  With the help of therapy he is breathing deeper now.  He is supposed to do the exercise bike on his own at home but I don’t think he has done it and the benefits seems to be slipping away.
• He was discharged after one month and went home.  It was a happy day for Otosan. The last week in the hospital he looked like a caged wild animal.
• One month after being discharged from the hospital he was having trouble walking and breathing again.  Satomi finally convinced him to go see the doctor.  He did and ended up being readmitted to the hospital “for tests”.
• It turned out that he had anemia.  He had had a bleeding hemoroid or something like that. He got the internal camera from top to bottom and was given a clean bill of health (or as clean as he is going to get with COPD).  Again his recuperative powers were at their best.  The anemia vanished with almost no treatment. Tomorrow he gets to come home.  He has orders to do his rehab.  The doctor wants Otosan to come to the hospital for rehab but he wants to do it on his own.  We’ll see how it goes.  It’s hard on him when he doesn’t take care of himself but it is even harder on Satomi’s mother who has to take care of him.

It’s going to be a year of change and decisions for everybody.  Otosan still wants to work but he can’t do much.  Okasan (Satomi’s mother) would like to quit growing oranges and just keep up gardening as a hobby but  the pension for farmers is low that they are worried about money.  The skyrocketing price of fertilizer and the plummeting prices for oranges aren’t helping anything.  On top of that the free trade agreement with the US starts this year so American fruit is about to become a lot cheaper.  It’s unbelievable how little they make do with already.  It has made me reconsider my spending habits. What they are most worried about isn’t the money to live but the money to pay the hospital bills if they get really sick. Japanese hospitals are cheap but it still adds up when you only get a pension of $300 dollars or so every month.  Otosan’s last stay in the hospital added up to $700 for 15 days.  Cheap by most countries’ standards but still more expensive than living at home.  I have no idea what their savings are like but I do know that the Japanese are good savers.  My wife always reminds me about that.

Sorry for the randomness and rambling of this post.  If you need a Cliff’s Notes version of what to take away from this, here it is.  Otosan is feeling well and excited to come home with his somewhat clean bill of health.  We all have our fingers crossed that he will take his rehab seriously not only for his sake burt for the sake of his wife as well.  The biggest question is will this be the year that they finally retire.  Otosan turns 80 this year so I think he deserves it.  Okasan does too.

Thanks for tuning in.

-The Green Tea Dreamer