Yay for Allergy Meds

So I had my first, and hopefully only, visit to my local hospital today. I was running low on allergy medication, in fact down to my last pill, and considering the harvest season lasts for another few months here, I decided that I should probably stock up on my supply. Now normally I get Claratin over-the-counter, loratadine seems to do the trick, and you don't need a prescription for it. At least not in the US. I found that out when I went to a drug store near the mall and tried to find some allergy medicine on the shelves. Turns out, they don't sell any over-the-counter allergy medication in Japan. Not even Benadryl. According to the attendant, people use allergy medicine for "bad things," so you have to get a doctor to prescribe it. So, onto the hospital at 9:30am. I had to show up there early, because apparently they only register new patients for one hour in the morning. If you have never gotten sick before, and you get sick after 10:30, I assume you are just out of luck. Anyways, when you register in the hospital, you also have to designate which type of physician you would like to see for your visit. Which meant I had to describe my symptoms to several nurses, none of whom spoke English. Add that to the fact that I have never had a prescription for allergy medication, since I would just grab some from my father who suffers the same sort of seasonal allergies as I do, and you've got the makings of a fairly large wrench in the well-ordered Japanese medical system. The registration nurse kept getting the impression that I had a food allergy, and insisted that I would need to get a series of tests to determine what was causing my allergies. I, just as adamantly, kept pulling out the last pill of Allegra I had and pointing at it emphatically. Finally realizing I wasn't going to submit to being poked with a ton of needles, the nurse on duty assigned me to the ear, nose, and throat department, and looked quite glad to get rid of me.

I waited in the waiting room for about twenty minutes, and then my name was called. I was ushered into a small cubicle with an attending otolaryngologist. Luckily, he spoke some English. He read over the symptoms that I had written down, along with the drugs that I had been using, and determined from my description that I was suffering from seasonal allergies, which was great, considering that was what I had been trying to get across the entire time. After sticking a fairly long Q-tip up both of my nostrils in order to get a mucous swab, he went over to examine it at the microscope, only to find that the main light was burned out. I must have seemed confident, for he just shrugged it off, and assumed I knew what I was talking about. Even more so, because he tried to prescribe me a different allergy medicine that I had been using, but when I was insistent on continuing my same regiment of Allegra, since I knew that it was effective, he seemed to take it in stride. Then came the really fun part. He asked me how many pills I would like to receive, and I responded by asking, "How many can you give me?" Great guy, he proscribed me 99 days worth of allergy medication, which comes out to almost 200 pills. I think he was just tired of my incessant questions. I assured him that the excessive quantity would probably last me through the entire year, but he just laughed and said if I needed more, to give him a call. Oh yah, and then the best part. Because Japanese health insurance is so good, my entire visit to the hospital cost me around ten US dollars, and a 14+ week supply of Allegra cost me around 50 bucks, which is almost a third of what the drugs would cost in America. Quite an ordeal, but my eyes and nose have been blissfully clear the entire day. No more rationing, the war is over! And thus, my first odyssey into the Japanese health care system was ended. At least I'm in their system now!