With Just One Change of Thinking

There was a time I set off for unmissable work in Kumamoto while carrying a urinary stone.

Anyone who has had one will know: an unbearable, dull, fierce pain continues, enough to keep the cold sweat flowing. I administered a suppository and set off fearfully, but my bad premonition hit the mark, and the day before the main event, a violent pain began. Having used up my spare suppositories, I rushed into a neighborhood doctor’s office in the city.

Skipping the medical interview entirely, I told the doctor in halting words, “It’s a urinary stone—my lower abdomen and my back… it hurts terribly.” At which, with a beaming smile, as if enjoying my being in pain, he returned the unexpected words, “Ha ha ha—you’re healthy!”

In my hazy heart, battling the pain, I cried inwardly, “Why, this quack…!”

“How is a state like this ‘healthy’?” I asked, wringing the words out through my suffering, and he said, “Because, you see—rather than something bad happening in your belly and you feeling nothing at all, the pain of that trouble being properly sent to your brain is proof that you are normal and healthy.” I was struck dumb by the answer.

Thrown off my guard, my pain, for some reason, began to ease a little; after an IV drip, I received a suppository and left the neighborhood doctor’s office.

Thinking about it calmly later, that doctor was no quack but a master physician.

The doctor who so splendidly repaired, with words alone, the heart and body of a man agitated and anxious with pain, and gave me a sense of ease, is a star of Eastern medicine. Next time we meet, please—pain-free—tell me all sorts of stories.