(Poem 312 for 2024 – I am writing a poem a day)

I was watching a Japanese show called After School Doctor about a doctor who appears to have a touch of ASD (Autism spectrum disorder) and is demoted for some unknown infraction to playing school nurse at an elementary school. For him, it is demoralizing and unpleasant. He introduces himself by instructing the children to stay away from the nurse’s office. The other adults explain that he means well and does not want them to get sick or injured…surely that is his meaning. The jury is still out on that one, but his gift is getting to the bottom of the root problems with the issues the children bring to him. He treats them as people capable of speaking for themselves, if asked the right questions in the right ways, and doesn’t stop searching until he finds a way to help. If only every medical professional we encounter could be so determined. One case, in particular, is troubling because the little girl keeps coming to the nurse’s office to sleep, falls asleep in class, falls asleep while eating lunch, and no amount of talking has gotten to the heart of the issue. She has gotten in trouble at home for her grades slipping, she has missed events with friends because she slept through their texts, and she has fallen asleep in the middle of a friend’s story, hurting their feelings, as though she found them boring or uninteresting. The kids in her class have begun to accuse her of attention seeking, conveniently falling asleep just before a test or getting out of group work by going to the nurse’s office to sleep. She cannot understand why this is happening and feels unheard, misunderstood, and terrified. Worst of all, in her mind, she is inconveniencing others. She is causing problems for her mother, her teacher, her friends, and the doctor. She has reached the point that she would rather not exist than be such a burden on those around her. She is only about 10 years old, best I can tell. The taunt from her classmates that hurts her most is that she is being a disruption and putting others out. It is such a strange thing to observe a culture where everyone is concerned about how their problems are affecting others and doing so on purpose would be the worst thing imaginable. When the underlying cause of her behavior is discovered to be cataplexy, a symptom of narcolepsy, she is relieved that she can be helped, her life can improve, and she can not only feel better, but stop causing grief for others. Her classmates come to her in tears, begging her forgiveness for their accusations and promising their support and friendship. The children are truly horrified that they falsely blamed her for an illness she could not control and that they were not empathetic to what she was going through. There are other ways of existing as a society and putting each other at the forefront with love, not that Japan has things perfect, I just wish we could pull the best bits and pieces from each culture and make a new one that treats everyone with respect.

@Home Studio – 312th poem of the year

Hinase, Mayu; Hikawa, Kayo. After School Doctor. 放課後カルテ Starring Kôhei Matsushita, Aoi Morikawa, Akira Takano, Chiaki Horan, Chihiro Kato, Sonim, Takashi Tsukamoto, Shinji Rokkaku, Yuta Hiraoka, and Hisashi Yoshizawa, 2024.