木村：この間、トラックに追突されて、その後調子が悪くてね。
鈴木：今のうちに何か手を打っておかないと、後遺症がでてきますよ。
Te wo utsu
Kimura: Kono aida, torakku ni tsuitotsu sarete, sono go chooshi ga warukute ne.
Suzuki: Ima no uchi ni nani ka te wo utte okanai to, kooishooga dete kimasu yo.
Kimura: I was hit from behind by a truck a while ago, and I have been feeling unwell ever since.
Suzuki: If you don't deal with that soon, you will suffer after effects.
Te wo utsu means to take countermeasures, to do something now to prevent ill effects in the future, to deal with a problem.
Until I experienced it myself, I never imagined how painful a whiplash injury could be. There are all sorts of other symptoms that arise from just twisting your neck.
Sometimes the nerves at the tips of my fingers lose all their feeling, and sometimes my eyesight goes completely haywire.
I have been to the doctor, but it is not as if I have broken any bones, so
Isha mo te no uchiyoo ga nai rashii (It seems as if there is nothing the
doctor can do to help). He suggested that I try acupuncture. I became concerned about it, and I started reading about people who were injured in other traffic accident cases.
National Geographic ran a special feature on the brain once, and I found a story about a woman who suffered brain damage in a traffic accident. She was able to cope with simple everyday conversation, but she lost the ability to understand abstract language or idioms.
For example, when she heard the expression, "It is raining cats and dogs," she would go into a panic, imagining that cats and dogs were really falling from the sky. She looked normal on the outside, but clearly something was wrong with her.
From the article, it wasn't clear whether she suffered because Kootsuu-jiko no ato, sugu ni te wo utanakkata (She didn't get herself seen to straight after the accident), or because Sugu ni te wo utta ni mo kakawarazu, konna kekka ni natta (In spite of being treated immediately, she ended up like this anyway).
The expression, "cats and dogs," incidentally, is said to come from Norse mythology, in which cats and dogs are the messengers of the gods of wind and rain. Fortunately enough, my understanding of language hasn't suffered any diverse effects so far, and considering the size of the truck that hit me, I consider myself very lucky.
When I get time, I'm going to go and try acupuncture treatment. I'm afraid, though, they might just tell me, Ima kara de wa te no uchiyoo ga arimasen (There's nothing we can do for you at this stage).