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.
A week or so ago I wrote a short post discussing some things I missed about living in the United States, but I left out one thing in particular – EggNog. I certainly miss it, and in any other circumstance it would be at the top of that list, but I left it out because Ma Li and I were going to try and make it… I smell an adventure!
Satoshi and I went out Saturday night, we went to a basketball game. The Japanese Basketball League has only been in operation for a few years, but the Oita Heat Devils have so far managed to finish both seasons ranked in the Top 5. Did I mention there were only 6 teams?
I’m slowly approaching a milestone of sorts – one unbroken year outside American borders. Fittingly, the last day I slept on American soil was my birthday, February 4th. With no plans to return home in the foreseeable future, I am just over 3 months away from hitting that aforementioned mark.
Therefore, I think it be high time to compose a short list of the things I’m beginning to long for most. This group is by no means complete, nor in any sort of order either of importance or of strength of longing. I’m just gonna toss stuff out as it comes to me…
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.”
Time to clean some house around here. I’ve got snippets of this and tidbits of that that I need to get rid of, so without further ado, I present: Drew in the Press!
We’re gonna run through these chronologically, with pictures linked at the end of each section. The pictures today are all scans, so if they’re slightly crooked it’s because I scanned them poorly, not because I have no sense of balance…
And, in a flash, it was over. During 13 days of non-stop travel we had covered almost all of the western half of Japan by plane, rail, and ferry.
We saw castles, ate everything in sight, went to onsen, saw kabuki, saw sumo, visited temples and shrines… about the only famously Japanese thing we didn’t do was go to karaoke!
Maybe next time…
I said goodbye to my parents at Tokyo Narita Airport, then boarded the first of several shinkansen back towards Beppu to go find my girl…
