Toast to Life 11

(Note: Google Translate from Japanese version with minor touching-ups.)

Last week, two friends joined me at a sushi place near JR Ogikubo station. We all spent several years right after our graduating from respective universities. Concerned about my physical condition, the two visited over to my hometown. I have had now a long relationship with them enough to become good friends now. Even when I was in Singapore and made occasional returns to Japan, I enjoyed with each or both of them wine & dine together in Tokyo. Yuya Ota ("Yukun", aka) is a one-year junior in the newspaper company, but he had had a "detour" during his college years and is a few years older than me. After joining the company, he moved to another competitor company from his grudge to then old place. He always spells out a word such like, "that's right, that's right" coming out from his gentle eyes and expression, which turned out to be his big talent to attract people around. Recently, he is addicted to fishing, which "I hated so much". Tamaki Sato ("Tamachan", this is her real name) joined the company a few years after Yukun and became in charge of the prefectural police office along with Yukun. Since that time, the two have been very close to each other, and it is correct that I gate-crasser into them later. Tamachan would also moved to a competitor just before being ordered to move to the previous company's head office in Tokyo. In recent years, Her buzz word is "I'm a company slave, a company slave": every time I meet, she said that. And this time, too, the phrase was just her repetition. Still, I highly respect her, too, to climb up the corporate ladder to the editor-in-chiefs of in-house periodicals every time I met her.

About an hour after we started talking, the topic moved on to my hospital stay. Yukun asked, "why did it take two months?" When I started to explain the schedule in the hospital such as radiation and chemotherapy, he stopped me in the middle, saying "no, I did not mean it. What is the hospital's criterion for your two months stay? Isn't it three months or one month?" ... I was surprised. At the same time, I was also surprised at the excitement inside toward his question, and was strangely convinced that "this is what it leads to form a story." I wasn't good at picking up stories from interviewees in general, but the guy in front of me (Yukun) was good, and he was a very talented guy actually. I'm not sure how conscious he is, but there have been countless people who got attracted to him for the talent.

I ruminated in my heart what I was thinking at the Narita hospital. "Why two months?" was certainly the question occurred to me, and to which I found a single answer. Looking around, some people with concussion were discharged in two weeks, while others stayed with nursing and rehabilitation for more than three months due to brain tumors (cancers). I occasionally spotted, next to my bed, rehabilitation therapists scolding patients for their skipping because of the person's torpor (not of tardiness), which just added agony into my heart. However, unfortunately, my conscious did not reach enough to find a reason(s) for the length of periods until someone pointed that out.

Here is what I was thinking when I was hospitalized. Singapore, not keeping patients waiting too long anyway, is a separate subject of discussion because it will be like "you will do surgery right after this" and "next is irradiation". But in Japan, when it comes to brain tumors, the postoperative hospitalization period is, first, derived from the period of radiation exposure. This is only and all the reason(s) for the deciding factor. 

A standard "local irradiation" is applied in normal cancer treatment. The maximum absorbed dose per year is 100gy (gray, about the same as sievert or sv), so if you divide this to the daily limit, it will be about 3gy per dose per day. Excuse me on a non-specialized site, but looking at the data from the Tokyo Central Wholesale Market, 3gy is at a level of causing human symptoms such as "hair loss, fever, infection, and infertility". It trickles down to one cool of 3gy in 30 times. If you rest your body two days a week on weekends (truth is I get easily tired of the irradiation with it being progressed), it will end in six weeks from the start. I was hospitalized on July 14th, "after two weeks of isolation for Covid-19 measures" (hospital official, which sounded rather dubious to me as I received the result of swab tests twice, one at the Narita airport at landing and one at the hospital, at the next day July 15th), my irradiation started on July 30th, with the end date of September 10th. I was discharged the next day, Sep 11th.

(I haven't studied enough data about "absorbed dose" for radiation. I was shown the data for it by the radiation doctor, but the copy was not given on my fault. I hope the readers can look it up by themselves.)

The actual irradiation timespan per day is in a very short period of time. The pre-work is troublesome. First, before starting the process, you will make a face-shaped mask ("shell"). This is put on your face every time for irradiation, adjusted by engineers, and made precise calculation for the irradiation. Troublesome was also because the position of my face and body was finely adjusted each time when irradiating. It took two engineers to slightly move myself on the bed-shaped stool little by little, right and left, saying "I'll move you a bit to the right" or  "I'll match the mark on your chest" with their both hands on my both shoulders or chest, as I was not supposed to move. You once enter the donut-shaped radiation-emmiting device, the diagnostic imaging, captured by a camera embedded in the device, shows a slight deviation of my body from what it should be, the bed will come out and you will have to start it over from the scratch. By the way, after the irradiation, the knitting pattern or "amiami" remained on my face, looking me ugly, but I was OK because I was inside the hospital at that time.

The irradiation time itself was about a few minutes. During 23 innings of the first half (not the first "half" with the ratio being 23 vs 7, but they call it), it was dazzling moment occurred as the light reflected on the eyelids. The blinking of the light stopped from the 24th time and on, and when I told one of the engineers about that, he was surprised saying "can you see the light?? Uhh, it's the first time to hear that!" What is "Uhh"? Am I idiosyncratic?

Long time passed after I was discharged, at the sushi place in the last week, I had a small bottle of beer and a small amount of sake at the dinner table with my friends. The doctor at Mita Hospital, which I am currently seeing, has given an OK to me on the condition that I never drink too much. I told that to the friends, now sitting in front to me. Tamachan said, "you guys I used to drawn yourself in alcohol", said Tamachan. An old  couple with their styles sitting next to us called out to her, "I'm watching TV." Yukun and I were stunned at their words with "?", but she said "oh, thank you so much!". We the two found that she sometimes appears in the Morning Plus FT of TVK (TV Tokyo). "That's why I don't want to stand out, already!", said Tamachan. Yukon and I were grinning. 

(The photo shows the site of the earthquake at Okawa Elementary School in Ishinomaki City, taken on June 26, 2014. The husband of S family, our old neighbor in Meguro days, is from Higashimatsushima City, Miyagi Prefecture, and I asked him to guide us (myself and daughter) when we returned to Japan. From the left, S family husband, my daughter, the husband's mother. Thank you very much for him and his mother, as well as her family taking care of our stay in the region back in 2014. The person on the far right is unknown. The photo now reminds me of human being as ephemeral. To be continued.)