About this site:  "Mare Kan"  Nurses with disabilities

This site is run by voluntary nurses with disabilities in Japan;

For people who are living with disability or illness, and wish to become a nurse in the future:

For people who are working as the nursing profession, with disability or illness:

For people who are now in recuperation, wishing to return to her / his loving nursing profession / to nursing school:

For people who want to study together with diverse nursing students, to work together with diverse nursing professions, to embrace diverse people.

We are going to create this site as like one stop information for Japanese language users who wish to know what kind of predecessors and fellows are on this planet, what kind of specific wisdom and taste do they have.

“Mere Kan”, our site’s name, is immensely inspired by the nonprofit resource network for nurses with disAbilities from U.S. : “www.Exceptional Nurse”. I.e., in Japanese “Mere”[稀] means "exceptional" or "rare", and “Kan” is the first Kanji character of nurse = [看護師] .

Maybe we are still  "rare" at this moment, we hope to continue this site’s activity frugally and plainly, until the day that each individual would be recognized as a diverse entity and “exceptional” would no longer mean "rare".

It is said that the diversification of healthcare professionals would effect improved health care accessibility to various people. And we wish to deal with information about other health care professionals and students as nurses with disabilities.

Currently this website is operated by:

Nozomi Kawabata, RN, BSN, BE, MSE

Welcome to our site! I used to be a medicinal chemist who tried to develop new medicine in a chemical company. Then I experienced depression including twice hospital stay and long recovery period.  I also became diabetic, got a diagnosis of PDD-NOS, however, this changed my life. I began to cook (in a chemist way) and eat plant-based Japanese diet, became a big fun of cycling, reduced 40kg of body weight, and got recovery from high blood sugar and pressure. So, I decided to become a nurse utilizing all of those experience and reflection. After serving as a staff nurse, currently I am translating books written about nurses with disabilities.

My current interest is the application of critical posthuman and multispecies anthropology on this theme. 

Yoko Setoyama, RN, BS, MSN, PhD

My background is a nurse. After brain surgeries, I had gait disorder and started to use a Lofstrand Crutch. I also have Facial nerve paralysis, trigeminal nerve palsy, left ear deafness , left eye blindness, and still have chronic pain of trigeminal neuralgia (Facial pain). I am  teaching at a medical university in Tokyo.