I took my mother to a local clinic to make a reservation for her health check.

Everyone in Japanese have to pay for health insurance. Thanks to the universal health insurance system, people like me can get medical services by paying 30% of total cost, and old people like my mother only pay 10%. If a healthy person hasn’t seen a doctor for long, he/she would lose most of money for other unhealthy people. But the idea of the universal health insurance is helping each other. And everyone has a right to get a health check once a year.

I have already got this year’s health check in August right after I came back in Japan. At that time, it was too hot. The highest temperatures were like 35 Celsius every day. I thought I would take my mother to health insurance once it gets cooler in autumn.

Now it’s near to the end of September, and it has got cooler a little, wind blow is comfortable. Today I took my mother to a local clinic to make a reservation for her health check. Although I know that my mother would soon forget the date of the check, I didn’t attend in the examination room. I let her go into there alone, because it was better for her to activate her remaining ability to make an appointment with doctor. Probably she would forget the date, but I knew that a nurse would give  me a memo for the date and time afterwards.

She could get several checks, but she refused tests of stomach and breast cancers. Actually, no one has died of any cancers in my mother’s relatives. Her families are very excellent people as for health. So, she is okay, but I am not. Because most of the people on my father’s side have died of cancers. I know that my brain comes from my mother and my body comes from my father. I think, some day in the future, I will be diagnosed that cancer tumor growing inside of me. Once it happens, my life will change forever. I have to spend my precious days until the day like that coming.

Anyway, I have to take her again to the clinic in the coming week. Checks are only for weight, height, blood pressure, urine and blood. It will not take much time.