Day 4, Saturday, turned out to be quite a bit more interesting than I initially expected. There wasn’t supposed to be much happening today, just a short meeting with Dr. Hara to go over my new MRI images.
When I woke up for breakfast though I found a message waiting for me on my phone from Ma Li telling me she was going to drop by in the afternoon. I hadn’t expected her back until Monday so that was a pleasant surprise!
Continue reading Hospital – Do You Understand the Risks Young Man?
We’re talking about Day 2 now, even though this is Day 3, just to make sure we’re all on the same page…
Every evening, provided there’s actually anything scheduled, you’re given a sheet detailing the following day’s activities. The sheet I received before heading to bed Wednesday night promised me a blood test in the morning and rehabilitation at 11 AM – other than that I would be left to my own devices.
Continue reading Hospital – Drew Locks Horns with the Head Rehab Nurse
When I stepped out of the elevator onto the 2nd floor of East Ward, Residence Wing, my fate truly began to sink in. Ma Li and I slowly walked down the long hall past 4 person room after 4 person room – all of which were filled with decrepit senior citizens. Aging’s a bitch, ain’t it?
Continue reading Hospital – Dinner with the Dancing Champion of Western Japan
Ma Li and arrived at Oita Univ. Hospital at 10:15 – just a tad late for our 10am check-in. I immediately began a battery of medical tests. The first stop was an EKG disguised as a medieval torture device. I had to lay down on a table while large clamps with suspicious wires running from them were attached to my ankles and wrists. Next, four large metal electrodes were suction-cupped to my chest in an array across the general location of my heart. I then braced myself for the electronic execution – but it never came. Instead the kind lady smiled and removed the life-sucking apparati and sent me off to my next stop.
Several weeks from now I will become a patient at Oita University Hospital. In April of 2005, during a game of IM basketball at the end of my senior year at W&L, I tore the ACL in my right knee. You may or may not know that as a freshman in high school I tore the ACL in my left knee. For that injury I had a patellar tendon graft, went through roughly 9 months of hellish rehabilitation, and emerged on the other side well enough to continue playing competitive soccer for another five years.
Spending three hours hunched over a chairback getting my tattoo done was the most painful thing I’ve ever done *voluntarily*, but my ACL reconstruction and the following rehabilitation? I wouldn’t wish that upon my worst enemy.
Having to go through all that AGAIN?
…I try not to think about it…
But I must, because 3 weeks from now on December 6th I’ll begin about a one month stay at the hospital. They do things a little differently here in Japan. My actual date of surgery is December 12th, yet I have to report a week early “for tests.” Ma Li gave ’em hell over the phone as to what exactly “tests” meant, but they stood firm and just insisted that I show up on December 6th for these mystery “tests.”