One Monday morning, I woke up around seven, coughing a lot. I had a sore throat. I felt feverish. I managed to get out of bed. I felt very chilly. I hurried back to bed.
The last time I had the flu was when I was in the first year in high school. I hadn't had a cold since then. I had heard that a bad case of flu was going around.
On the previous day, I went shopping in downtown Nagoya with my friends from my high school days. We walked around in the crowded department stores and underground malls. I must have picked up the flu from the crowd. I regretted that I should have worn a surgical mask (flu mask) to Nagoya. But it was too late.
I called downstairs for my mother. She came up soon and asked what the matter was. I told her that I had the flu. She put her hand on my forehead.
"Yes, you have a fever," she said.
She went out and came back with a thermometer. She handed it to me and told me to take my temperature. I put the thermometer under my armpit. After one minute, I took out the thermometer and handed it to my mother.
She checked it and said, "A little over thirty-eight degrees. This must be a case of the flu."
Then she added, "You can't go to school today. You should be absent from school and stay in bed all day today. Should I call the doctor and make an appointment for you?"
"I don't like to go to see the doctor. I think that, if I stay in bed all day, I can get over this flu by tomorrow," I said.
"If you say so, let's see what happens. I'll fix something nutritious and easy to digest for your breakfast," so saying, my mother went downstairs.
After a while, she came back with a bowl of rice gruel, okayu in Japanese, a few salty pickled plums, umeboshi, and a raw egg. Though I didn't have an appetite because of the fever, my mother insisted that I should eat, saying that I need the energy to get rid of the flu. After breakfast, I fell asleep.
When I woke up the next time, it was around two in the afternoon. I had sweated a lot, and my muscles ached all over my body. My throat felt scratchy and I couldn't help coughing. I also had a runny nose. I sneezed. I felt I had gotten worse. I felt very weak.
I took out a flashlight and a mirror from the top drawer of the chest. I shone the flashlight and looked into the throat in the mirror. The tonsils were red and swollen. No wonder I had a sore throat.
When I was a child, I had mistaken the thing hanging from the middle of the throat for the tonsil, which has a funny Japanese name, 'nodo-chinko,' which can be literally translated into English as 'penis of the throat.'
Since we had known that only the boys have a penis, I remember I really wondered whether the girls also have 'nodo-chinko.' I could have asked my mother to let me see the inside of her mouth, but somehow I wasn't aware that my mother was a female.
I discussed this matter with one of my classmates. He told me that he too had wondered about that.
So one day we asked one of the girls in our class to let us look into her throat, not telling her the real reason, but just telling her that we were just curious whether the inside of the girl's mouth looked the same as the boy's.
Yes, there it was!
Then we started to doubt the appropriateness of the Japanese naming of that organ.
It was only when I was a high school student that my doubt dissolved.
In one of the classes conducted by an ALT, assistant language teacher, from Australia, she was teaching us the names of the various parts of the body. She was teaching, using the charts showing the parts of the human body. She used several charts showing both the outside parts and also the inside parts.
One of the charts showed the inside of the mouth. There I found 'nodo-chinko.'
As I told you, I had known by that time that girls also had a 'nodo-chinko.' What I hadn't known was the English name of that organ, and that it was not a 'tonsil.'
Pointing at that part, she explained that the part was named 'uvula' in English, that the word had come from Latin uva, meaning 'grape,' and that the part was so named because it resembled a bunch of grapes hanging on a grapevine.
Then pointing at the two small roundish organs of flesh at the sides of the throat near the back of the tongue, she said that they were tonsils. So saying, she asked if any of us had had his or her tonsils removed in the childhood.
It was at that moment that I realized that tonsils were that pair of organs, not the 'nodo-chinko.' Then she started to explain about tonsils. According to her explanations, we learned the following facts.
The primary function of the tonsils is filtering out the harmful microorganisms that could infect the body.
Occasionally, however, when they become overwhelmed by a bacteria infection, they swell and become inflamed. This infection is known as tonsillitis. It is common particularly among children.
When she finished her explanation about tonsils, I raised my hand, saying, "Teacher, I have a question." She looked at me curiously, but said, "Yes, please." I asked her if she knew the Japanese word for a uvula.
At my question the whole class including all the girls burst into laughter. She looked perplexed, not understanding why we were laughing.
She said, "No, I don't. But why are you laughing?"
I told her in English that a uvula was popularly called 'nodo-chinko' and its literal translation into English is 'the penis of the throat.'
She flushed slightly, but calmly produced another chart out of the piles of the charts on the teacher's desk and hanged it on the chalkboard.
It was a chart of a male organ viewed from the front.
Pointing at the penis, she said, "Yes, it resembles a penis, doesn't it, though when it is not erected."
At her remark we burst into laughter again. She too.
Then she went on to explain about the names of the parts of male sex organs and their functions. After the male sex organs, she explained the names of the parts of female sex organs and their functions.
I had never seen my classmates listening so eagerly to every word of the teacher during the class. That is the most interesting English class that I had ever had until then and that I have had ever since then, all through my school days.
I have almost forgotten about my flu while I was looking into my throat, and recollecting that interesting English class.
Now I'll return to the story of my flu.
We have finals in two weeks. If I didn't attend classes this whole week, I wouldn't be able to perform well in the finals.
I took my temperature again. When I looked at the thermometer, I was shocked. The temperature was nearly 40 degrees!
I called for my mother. She came up and looked surprised to see how I looked.
"Oh, you look very bad. You should have taken my advice and I should have called the doctor," she complained.
"At Aoyama clinic, the evening consultation hour starts at five. I'll call the clinic and make an appointment for you."
I nodded to her feebly. Then she helped me change my pajama top and bottoms into fresh ones.
"Now take a nap for a while until the time comes. If you are hungry, I'll warm some milk for you. When you have the flu, you need plenty of liquids."
She came back with a glass of warm milk and a piece of kasutera, my favorite Japanese cake. Fresh pajamas, warm milk and kasutera refreshed me a bit.
I could take a good nap until four thirty, when my mother woke me up.
Putting on a thick sweater over the pajamas and then putting on an overcoat, I climbed into the passenger seat of my mother's car. It was only five minutes' ride to the clinic.
My mother gave my health insurance card to the receptionist. Since I had an appointment, I was soon invited into the examination room.
The doctor was a middle-aged female physician. She asked me some questions about how I was feeling. Then she asked me to remove my pajama top and began to examine me.
She used a stethoscope to listen to my heart and lungs in order to check for any irregularities. After the examination, the doctor said that it was a case of the flu, maybe Hong Kong type A, which had been going around for a while in the area.
She added that the only remedy for flu is time and rest, taking care not to develop pneumonia. In order to lower the fever, she prescribed an injection and medicine for my sore throat.
The young nurse gave me a shot. First she swabbed my arm with alcohol. The sight of a syringe always scares me. I closed my eyes when the nurse injected me.
Back home, I climbed into my bed and slept again. My father came back around seven after I had my supper of vegetable soup. Hearing from my mother about my flu, he looked into my room to see how I was.
I still had a high fever, sweating a lot, sneezing and coughing occasionally. Sitting at my bedside, he said that he would fix the best remedy for the flu, which would work better than any doctor's medication.
I wondered what it was. In an hour or so, he came up with a coffee cup. The liquid inside smelled like sake.
I asked what it was. He said it was tamago-zake. He explained how he fixed it. He heated up about a cup of sake in a pan, added an egg, and when it was half-boiled, removed the pan from the heat and then he added sugar to make it tasty.
Now he told me to drink it with a toast to my quick recovery. It was my first time to drink sake. I asked him if it was OK for me to drink it. He said it was not sake, but medicine. I drank it in a gulp. I could feel the warm sake going down through my esophagus, or food tube. I felt a little drunk and then got very sleepy.
I could hear my father saying something to me, but he sounded very remote, and without being aware, I fell asleep.
When I awoke the next morning, I found I was quite refreshed. I didn't feel feverish, had no scratchy sensation in my throat, no sneezing or coughing, and no aching muscle.
A case of the flu normally requires four or five days of rest to recover. My father's tamago-zake worked a miracle!
"Thank you, Father." I whispered in my mind.
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