Cross-cultural communication （３）　

３） Jaundice?
　An American man in his early 30s came to see me because his hands were turning yellow and he thought his liver must have been damaged. He said he was so worried about it that he could not sleep at night these days. He was an English teacher and had just arrived in Japan a few months before, so he could not speak Japanese, had no friends, and seemed quite anxious.

　I examined him and found that he did indeed have a slight yellow tinge in the palms of both hands, but there was no yellow tinge in the whites of his eyes, nor in any other part of his body. I explained this to him, and just to be sure, I did a blood test to check his liver function. Of course, the results were normal. When I explained the results to him at our follow-up visit a week later, he left with a truly refreshed look on his face.

　Jaundice in both hands only was probably caused by eating a lot of yellow pigmented foods such as tangerines and pumpkins. This jaundice phobia is sometimes experienced by Japanese people as well. The underlying cause is psychological anxiety. This American man, who was in a foreign country, did not speak the language, and had no one to talk to, was in a situation where these symptoms were most likely to occur. The way to improve the symptoms of these patients is to provide convincing evidence and clear explanations in a language that the patient understands, as shown here.

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