The Destination of Suffering

One evening, on my way home from work, I stopped by a chain ramen shop. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't particularly good either. If asked whether it was a hit or a miss, it was a taste that sat right in the middle, making it extremely difficult to judge.
After that, I went home and went to sleep, but in the middle of the night, I woke up with a stomach ache. I went to the bathroom, but even after sitting there for quite a while, the source of the pain wouldn't come out at all.
Before long, the pain grew worse and worse, until finally, I couldn't even sit up straight. While I was groaning with my hands on the floor and my face against my knees while still sitting on the toilet seat, nausea suddenly struck me.
I hurriedly changed my position, and although the vomiting was completed quickly, the stomach pain didn't subside. In the end, I sat back on the toilet seat and suffered.
Thinking that I might be done for since it was so painful, I began to summarize my life—wondering what I had actually done or left behind, and concluding that it had been a truly trivial life—while at the same time, I was thinking about the differences in design philosophy between Western-style and Japanese-style toilets.
Western-style toilets are comfortable and relaxing, but it's hard to push. Japanese-style toilets are the exact opposite; they make it easy to push, but they aren't suited for a long battle. This must surely be the difference between hedonistic Western culture and diligent, honest Japanese culture. However, saying that Westerners are hedonistic and Japanese are honest is somehow far too broad. Grouping everyone as Westerners in contrast to Japanese is too vague. Even if you say 'the West' in one word, it must be quite different depending on the region.
More than that, if I was able to think about such things, I must surely still be okay. When I thought that, my stool suddenly came out smoothly.
With this, the suffering ended for the time being, but because it had been so painful, I took the next day off work and went to see a doctor.
"Well, the possibility of food poisoning is low."
"Then what is it?"
"Lately, stomach flu has been going around, so..."
"The flu?"
I couldn't accept having something that painful dismissed as just the flu.
"But doctor, it was extremely painful."
"Those are the symptoms of stomach flu."
"It was so painful that I even thought about the differences between Western and Japanese toilets."
"Is that so?" the doctor said, and wrote something in my medical chart.