I’m so much a ninja, apart from the limping,
people can’t really tell I even had knee surgery – can you?
Anyone who has lived in Japan (or even visited) knows how crazy the morning rush hour commute is. It is a hectic, push and shove match that – I strongly believe – is the dry-land version of a feeding frenzy. Or a rugby match on crack. Those unfamiliar or unindoctrinated with this particular event will find it overwhelming. My brother did when he came over to Japan and spent a few days in Tokyo.
In fact, even for those who know what to expect can still be stressed out over it. I see it every day, upon the faces of the office workers and employees that dash and violently manuver their way to their connecting train lines or exiting the train stations.
And these are able bodied people who have not had knee surgery.
I have had knee surgery. Let me tell you now, it SUCKS to be disabled in Japan.
Patrick Swayze – 1952-2009
My favourite film of his will always be Roadhouse.
Yeah, its all that hardcore fighting action. Though my official answer will be because of its ties to the martial arts. Swayze’s character Dalton practiced some kind of system in order to deliver multiple bruises and broken bones to the bad guys. Or rowdy bar customers.
Though Roadhouse is hardly what I’d call a martial art film. Any film that has topless bar dancing automatically gets booted out of the genre and into a loving place in my heart.
I saw Roadhouse as a child. And I couldn’t believe that the guy kicking major butt and getting the blonde hottie at the end of the day shared the same name as I. It was then I thought that anyone named “Patrick” belonged to a pretty cool club – which, of course, I was a part of by default.
And, I suspect, if you look at his films, you’ll find a hint of bittersweetness and tragedy in his characters – in Roadhouse his character’s friend and mentor (spoiler), in Ghost Swayze’s charaters die, and Red Dawn has nothing but all sorts of tragedy. Let’s not forget as well the diluted form of philosophy – that cool Swayze code of conduct.
Heck, Swayze even knew how to have a little fun.
But it’s sad.
While the world lost another person to pancreatic cancer or an adult woman somewhere lost her teenaged Tiger Beat pinup model, I lost a member in my kick ass We Share the Same Name club.
The first in a weekly series of Japan photos. Every Friday I plan on taking loads of pictures, and – through the miracle of modern editing – resize and post some of them on the same day.
This is how it feels like to live in Japan from time to time
I’ve eaten sashimi so fresh that was still moving.
I’ve found myself in uncomfortable situations – stuck between a fat man and a busty woman – on the train in Tokyo all in the name of making the most of space.
I’ve seen and experienced a few things that would never have happened to me nowhere else but in Japan.
Sometimes just going on Yahoo Japan surprises me. Usually, it’d be easy to go about finding a Japanese model in a bikini directly on the site, but I opted for this as a pretty good replacement.
If you’re looking for more photos of Japan here’s a link – Quirky Japan Blog. Warning: multiple large photographs on opening page, thumbnails be damned!
I needed to post something. Something about the country I live in, this post doesn’t do it justice. Think of this as a poorly rendered teaser where you hope the feature presentation will have juicy bits to sink your teeth into.
Or at the very least be entertaining. Stay tuned.
It’s my first post back since I had knee surgery. Woohoo!
I have to say the first couple days were horrible, but each new day brought a better outlook on my surgery and the pain has slowly ebbed away where now I can easily deal with certain level of discomfort in my right leg without the need to pop a pain pill. Not to say I would never want to go through that experience again, but now I know what to expect the next time I have to go into surgery (and I do, one year from now, to remove the anchors and screws in my knee).
Taken two days after my surgery, notice the poofy right ankle
My wonderful girlfriend Yoko accompanied me to the clinic – that picture of the lounge (待 合 室) is old, those plants are twice as big now! – where I had my surgery and got to see the work that was put into making my new ACL on a monitor.
After starving, getting shaved, dressed in really embarrassing paper clothing, checked, and stabbed with an I.V. needle, I entered the operating room at 7 p.m. I lay down on the table – which has a hydraulic press underneath of it – and was told that general anesthesia would begin. Two hours later I wake up in my room.
The operation went like this; first my right leg gets propped up, they stick a camera inside and check everything. LCL, good. MCL, good. PCL, good. ACL, huh, where’d it go?
So they take two tendons from my hamstring, about 20-25 cm long, and fold each one into four equal lengths. Then they take a power drill, and burrow through my tibia and femur. I end up with four holes in my knee. Watching the drilling portion of my surgery made Yoko feel sick.
Afterwards they took the tendons, thread them through the bone holes in my knee, pulled on the tendons to create tension and locked it down with two titanium anchors and two – very long – stainless steel screws. To finish things up, they take a hammer and hit the screws in my knee – for fun I guess – and sew me shut.
20:20:20 – is where my ACL should be, it’s not
20:41:46 – my lovely two bone holes
20:55 to 21:07 – both new ACLs get thread into place
I also had a tear in my medial meniscus, but it only needed sutures. Not so dramatic as I thought it’d be. But that’s a good thing.
When I wake up, I have several visitors. Interestingly enough I hold coherent conversations with them though I don’t remember talking to them.
I also wake up to several tubes in my body. Aside from my I.V. there’s a cooling tube and drainage tube in my knee, an epidural and a catheter. Oh yeah, that catheter, good times…
I do not sleep through the night. Come Saturday morning my epidural has faded away and the pain hits – hard. Imagine pain that makes you sick to your stomach, but that’s not it. It’s a pain beyond that and it made me want to stab my eyeballs with rusty daggers to take my mind off the pain in my knee.
I should also note that Japanese healthcare is known for it’s less than stellar pain relief system. My pain meds were only 200 mg each for each tablet and I was told to take only one three times a day. It made wonderful sleepless nights for three days following the surgery.
“You can only take one pill of each type three times in a day
yes, we know it sucks but, hey, do your best okay? がんばってください！”
I hardly manage through the morning of the next day. People tell me I looked like I was going to pass out everytime I sat up and tried to do rehab. Oh, it’s expected that you walk as soon as possible under your own power right after knee surgery.
Another thing I should point out is that women are able to deal with the severity of pain better than men. Case in point, a high school girl who had knee surgery the same day I did was up and walking around in the morning whereas I had to be carted around in a wheelchair. I gave her a thumbs up when we crossed paths in the rehab center of the clinic.
Eventually, I was released and made my way back home to my lovely apartment in “the city of two days”, which is the literal meaning of the city I live in.
The week after the surgery was hard on me. Yoko stayed over for the weekend after surgery, cooking my meals, picking up after me, changing the DVDs when they were over, and helping me go to the toilet. I’ve never felt so helpless in my life. It’s why support systems are so important whenever anyone goes into surgery. Make sure you have one in place before if you’re heading under the knife.
Then when Yoko went back home and headed to work I had to fend for myself.
But things now are so much better. My knee no longer hurts as much as it did. I can go without any pain medication. Although my knee pops a lot more than before. My therapist – Aono-san is the fourth guy down – said that was normal, and the only time popping should concern me is if it’s accompanied with pain. It just sounds scary.
My ultra lightweight -2 Stealth/+3 Coolness knee brace
I also started working again; it does take my mind off of things. And it’s summer break now in Japan, which means work is a delight. Not difficult at all. I spend my days in the office sitting in front of a computer and chat with co-workers about the weather and strange Japanese fashion.
Everyone in the office still expects me to go slow – which I am – and they wouldn’t hold it against me if I chose to call it a half-day.
I’m still doing my rehab – awkward right leg lunges (cause my leg is still newborn baby weak and I need to slowly build up my quad strength), tippy-toes, leg raises and side leg raises – and eating healthy, more so than before.
My next check up is in two weeks. I hope I’m recovering nicely.
I had originally planned to use this blog as a sounding board for my life in Japan outside of jiu-jitsu (the martial art system I’m totally crazy about, but can’t participate in now), but we write about what we know. So all the fantastic and extraordinary moments (as well as the only-in-Japan moments) will have to take a back seat to what is currently taking up my thoughts and time.
I’m having ACL reconstruction surgery, and repair to my medial meniscus, on Aug 14th. Yea me.
Where I’m having surgery
I’m not looking forward to the surgery. Lots of ouch, lots of sore. I’m not a big fan of pain.
What I am looking forward to is the hard work after the surgery.
I’ve always found the what-makes-things-tick, the behind-the-scenes work, everything that goes into the final product, fasinating. I genuinely appreciate and concider the effort that goes into any accomplishment interesting. Probably why I like DVD commentaries that offer insight to the filmmaking process rather than the ones with the actor going “Wow, I have a lot of sex in this movie.” (Actually, that was a pretty good commentary now that I think about it)
Part of it is that I’m really eager to see how much of my previous fitness level I can regain or surpass. Basically I went from one moment walking about, doing burpees with ease to the next one limping along, needing surgery for my knee.
One day I want to be at the same fitness level I was before my injury and people will be standing in disbelief that I was even injured in the first place.
At least I hope so.
My injuries possibly came hand-in-hand and three times over the course of five months starting way back in February of this year. The common trilogy of knee injuries are the MCL tear, ACL tear and meniscus tear, which I have. The first time I injured my knee it was a tear of my MCL. My current doctor, Emoto-sensei, believes that my ACL was probably torn or placed under tons of stress because of my MCL tear.
Two more injuries later, an official MRI reading and a week after the most recent injury (just to be on the safe side and not jump into surgery), it was confirmed that my ACL was torn. The MCL is a big tendon, mine has sort of healed up (from the second injury) and it has acceptable stablity so no surgery is needed.
What led me to concider and consent to the surgery? Well, I led a pretty active lifestyle before my knee injury. I worked out twice week in addition to training jiu-jitsu three times a week. And its a lifestyle I’ve grown accustomed to and want back. Also, and probably more importantly, is that the long term effects of my knee injury are much more worse without surgery. Obviously I like being active, I like walking around comfortably much, much more.
my ACL, upset face included
My ACL is procedure will be a hamstring tendon graft. That’s where they take two tendons from my hamstring (obviously not the primary one), fold it, drill four holes in my knee, put the tendons in place and lock it down with screws. I heal up in half a year (or longer) and go back to bouncing up and down the jiu-jitsu training halls.
The pros of this type of procedure is that there is less scarring, slower loss of muscle strength (according to my physical therapist), and a chance of tendon re-growth in the donor location. Also I’ll be able to kneel without any pain. There’s a lot of kneeling in jiu-jitsu.
The cons are that it takes a longer time period to heal and the chance of re-tear is siginificantly higher because it takes longer.
my medial meniscus, unhappy face included
The repair to my medial meniscus is the one that I’m really worried about, strange as that might be. Depending on where and how vast the damage is my chances of a recovery are not very good. They were never good to begin with as the central part of the meniscus does not heal, repairs that fail often lead to a complete removal and things go down hill from there.
One of the benefits of being injured is the amount of knowledge and experience that gained. I’ve gotten pretty knowledgable on knee injuries and injuries in general. I’d have no problem discussing my surgery back home, although in Japan it’s a little more difficult.
I’ve also been doing research on exercises to help speed/assist my recovery, getting in touch with people who have gone through surgery as well, making my own prehab (when my rehab is done, my prehab starts – its to prevent re-injury) plan, sharing that with trusted experienced individuals and getting their opinions.
Olypmic Gold medalist Kaori Icho (2nd from the right)
has been a patient of my doc, I’m in good hands
This week I’m preparing for the surgery, cleaning my room, moving things around, buying groceries for after the surgery (won’t be going out for my meals that’s for sure). Not sure if I’ll be up for doing anything the week following my surgery other than eating, using the toilet, watching DVDs, studying Japanese, rehabing and sleeping. I’m hoping I get bored and get a bad case of creative writer’s itch.
At least I’ll have an excuse for being late. I have to take it slow, doctor’s orders.
It’s always odd when writing the very first post of a brand new blog.
Will it drawn in readers? Probably not.
Two years down the line will I look back at the post and be painfully embarrassed, reminded how much of a goof ball I really am or find my prose awkward and immature? I like to think so. To say one no really changes within the time span of a couple of years is like saying my favourite flavour of ice cream is and always will be chocolate.
People change.
And incidently, I like mint chocolate now.
