Sunday, December 7th, 1997
By Lee Poston

Daily Diary Archives

Surgeon General's Warning: Climate Change Is Hazardous To Your Health

Lee Poston

What should have been a semi-relaxed weekend mixing work and pleasure, unfortunately turned into a bit of an ordeal for your intrepid Climate Chronicler. Without boring you with too much detail, I developed a problem in my right eye (probably from staring at this laptop for too long) on Friday night and after a long consultation and negotiation with my ophthalmologist in Washington, I reached an agreement on a binding commitment to reduce eyeball emissions (hereafter known as tears) by 20 percent by the year 2005.

OK, so maybe I've been at these negotiations too long--but I really did need to have it looked at, because my doctor was concerned about a possible detached retina. This of course freaked me out, being in a foreign land where I don't speak the language (and on a Saturday no less). So I did the only sensible thing and called the Front Desk at the Kyoto Takaragaike Prince Hotel where I'm staying. I told them I was with the WWF-US delegation, but they only heard the latter part, and thought I was a US politician who had suddenly become ill.

The folks here at the Prince immediately sprung into action. They called around the local hospitals until they found one with good English-speakers. They then ordered me a car AND an interpreter from Guest Relations. They were quite surprised when I walked to the lobby wearing jeans and sweatshirt. As the interpreter said, "We were expecting somebody much older."

They didn't even blink however, and I was whisked away to Baptist Hospital (they had already called ahead to let them know a US politician was coming). I was seen in a matter of minutes, and thankfully the problem was not serious and should resolve itself in a few weeks. What's more, the whole hospital visit cost me about the price of dinner -- being used to the US healthcare system, I fully expected to be calling Western Union for a quick influx of cash to cover the exorbitant cost. I was pleasantly surprised to say the least.

At this point, I'd like to personally thank the Prince Hotel's General Manager, Mr. Matsui, Guest Services Director and interpreter Atsuko Takayama from Guest Services, and the many other staff members who helped me through this little incident. They refused to listen to my repeated assertions that they were going to too much trouble, and were only concerned with my welfare at all times.

Hopefully, next weekend will be a little less eventful. I'll try and keep my injuries to a writers cramp or stubbed toe.