Knee Appreciation Week
Dec. 20th, 2005 02:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tobu_ishiIt's eleven-thirty at night. Do you know where your knees are?
No, really. Consider your knees. Think of all they do for you, without your even noticing it most of the time. Remind yourself of their many uses. Bask in their glow as you successfully and painlessly stand up, sit down, get in and out of bed, climb or descend stairs, enter or exit the bathtub, crouch to pick things up...
As I'm sure you can tell, I have developed a new appreciation for my knees. The inspiration for my knee-love is that, earlier this month, I discovered myself abruptly stripped of normal knee activity. Beats me as to why, but my knees decided without warning to behave as if all the insulating cartilege within had been removed and replaced with unsanded plastic doll joint parts. My every attempt to bend my knees with my weight on them was accompanied by a serenade of crackles and pops that would have made the Krispies elves proud, as well as a burst of stabbing pains, as though a thoroughly-loaded pincushion had been inserted into each joint and was now exploding its way out again....
For those not aware, my body has been doing some funny stuff in general lately, since I came to Japan.
For one thing, I've lost a lot of my tolerance for red meat. I still like it just fine, but my body has only processed it in amounts larger than an ounce or so about three times over the last four months. The result of this, as I discovered after a happy gorging session last month, is that large amounts of red meat now make me physically ill. I shall have to work my way up to it again when I get back to America, I guess.
For another, I've been losing weight. The problem here is that I'm not supposed to be, nor am I trying to. Out here in Japan, it's perfectly normal and often encouraged to talk about your weight gains and losses, but I retain enough of my American manners to remember it's rude to go into detail about how much weight you lost when you weren't actually actively dieting, so I won't give numbers. Suffice to say, I'm hovering slightly below my healthy minimum at the moment, and trying not to drop any lower. Mostly through okawari.
So when my knees gave out, it was a surprise, but not a shock. They do say that these things come in threes. I hobbled around like the unfortunate hatter from Howl's Moving Castle for a day, blithely hoping to fall asleep that night and wake up in possession of a pair of knees again and not a pair of badly jointed tinker toys. Alas, such was not the case, so on going (more slowly than usual) to school the next day I paid a visit to the school nurse.
Japanese school nurses' offices are a lot like American ones, apparently. This one was slightly old-fashioned by American standards, to the point where I felt rather like I ought to be wearing a pleated wool skirt and pullover sweater, and rolling down a pair of navy knee socks to show off my offending joints. (Twin braided pigtails and general sepia tones would also not have felt out of place.)
The nurse, a pleasant, matronly sort, inspected me and did her best to question me in Japanese, then sat me down and plastered a couple of squishy, white pads onto my kneecaps. The eucalyptus fumes from them probably disinfected the examination corner where I sat on the spot, though they diminished to breathable levels when she wrapped my knees in about an inch-thick layer of gauze. Equipped with a box of fresh fume-o-pads, extra bandaging materials, and instructions to change the wrappings nightly, I exited the office with my charming new walk, a cross between scarecrow stalk and zombie shuffle.
It's weirdly entertaining and particularly inconvenient to have dysfunctional knees in Japan. The Rising Sun country is not the most handicapped-equipped of first-world nations, as I discovered over the four days or so I wore my support bandaging and fume-o-pads. I discovered things I'd never known about my local train stations, like where the escalators are, or--more irritatingly--are not. Japan is a very stairs-intensive country, and being unable to use stairs requires a lot of hobbling around in search of elevators and/or escalators, which are sometimes in existence and sometimes not. Stairs are everywhere, in front of department stores, at the entrances to restaurants and karaoke joints and bars and, yes, schools. And it's really hard to sit down comfortably at a Japanese table, let alone climb into a deep Japanese bathtub, when you can't bend your legs.
By the time the bandages came off for good that Monday, I was very much in love with my newly rejuvenated joints. (Whatever is in those pads besides the eucalyptus, they are some strong ju-ju. Worked like a charm, even if they did make my legs feel like they were percolating with Pop Rocks when freshly applied.) I was not so in love with the Japanese transit system as I had been, or with the construction of Japan in general. It must really suck to have a permanent physical disability here. I could at least haul myself uncomfortably down the stairs in a penguin-like gait if absolutely necessary. The concept of being wheelchair-bound in such a vertical country doesn't bear thinking on...
In any case, welcome back, my beloved knees. You were sorely missed. Pun very much intended.
-
This entry has been largely to distract myself from the fact that 90% of JSP is going back to America tomorrow, and I will be in the small percentage left behind to wave goodbye as the bus pulls out in about eleven hours. A lot of them are coming back for next semester, but it's still three months off and therefore a fair excuse for angst and distractive rambling.
Also, if anybody needs ideas for a cheap last-minute Xmas gift, I'd love a paid LJ account. XD I promise to bombard you all with (succinct) voice posts if you get me one...which ability would probably also encourage me to post more often...
No, really. Consider your knees. Think of all they do for you, without your even noticing it most of the time. Remind yourself of their many uses. Bask in their glow as you successfully and painlessly stand up, sit down, get in and out of bed, climb or descend stairs, enter or exit the bathtub, crouch to pick things up...
As I'm sure you can tell, I have developed a new appreciation for my knees. The inspiration for my knee-love is that, earlier this month, I discovered myself abruptly stripped of normal knee activity. Beats me as to why, but my knees decided without warning to behave as if all the insulating cartilege within had been removed and replaced with unsanded plastic doll joint parts. My every attempt to bend my knees with my weight on them was accompanied by a serenade of crackles and pops that would have made the Krispies elves proud, as well as a burst of stabbing pains, as though a thoroughly-loaded pincushion had been inserted into each joint and was now exploding its way out again....
For those not aware, my body has been doing some funny stuff in general lately, since I came to Japan.
For one thing, I've lost a lot of my tolerance for red meat. I still like it just fine, but my body has only processed it in amounts larger than an ounce or so about three times over the last four months. The result of this, as I discovered after a happy gorging session last month, is that large amounts of red meat now make me physically ill. I shall have to work my way up to it again when I get back to America, I guess.
For another, I've been losing weight. The problem here is that I'm not supposed to be, nor am I trying to. Out here in Japan, it's perfectly normal and often encouraged to talk about your weight gains and losses, but I retain enough of my American manners to remember it's rude to go into detail about how much weight you lost when you weren't actually actively dieting, so I won't give numbers. Suffice to say, I'm hovering slightly below my healthy minimum at the moment, and trying not to drop any lower. Mostly through okawari.
So when my knees gave out, it was a surprise, but not a shock. They do say that these things come in threes. I hobbled around like the unfortunate hatter from Howl's Moving Castle for a day, blithely hoping to fall asleep that night and wake up in possession of a pair of knees again and not a pair of badly jointed tinker toys. Alas, such was not the case, so on going (more slowly than usual) to school the next day I paid a visit to the school nurse.
Japanese school nurses' offices are a lot like American ones, apparently. This one was slightly old-fashioned by American standards, to the point where I felt rather like I ought to be wearing a pleated wool skirt and pullover sweater, and rolling down a pair of navy knee socks to show off my offending joints. (Twin braided pigtails and general sepia tones would also not have felt out of place.)
The nurse, a pleasant, matronly sort, inspected me and did her best to question me in Japanese, then sat me down and plastered a couple of squishy, white pads onto my kneecaps. The eucalyptus fumes from them probably disinfected the examination corner where I sat on the spot, though they diminished to breathable levels when she wrapped my knees in about an inch-thick layer of gauze. Equipped with a box of fresh fume-o-pads, extra bandaging materials, and instructions to change the wrappings nightly, I exited the office with my charming new walk, a cross between scarecrow stalk and zombie shuffle.
It's weirdly entertaining and particularly inconvenient to have dysfunctional knees in Japan. The Rising Sun country is not the most handicapped-equipped of first-world nations, as I discovered over the four days or so I wore my support bandaging and fume-o-pads. I discovered things I'd never known about my local train stations, like where the escalators are, or--more irritatingly--are not. Japan is a very stairs-intensive country, and being unable to use stairs requires a lot of hobbling around in search of elevators and/or escalators, which are sometimes in existence and sometimes not. Stairs are everywhere, in front of department stores, at the entrances to restaurants and karaoke joints and bars and, yes, schools. And it's really hard to sit down comfortably at a Japanese table, let alone climb into a deep Japanese bathtub, when you can't bend your legs.
By the time the bandages came off for good that Monday, I was very much in love with my newly rejuvenated joints. (Whatever is in those pads besides the eucalyptus, they are some strong ju-ju. Worked like a charm, even if they did make my legs feel like they were percolating with Pop Rocks when freshly applied.) I was not so in love with the Japanese transit system as I had been, or with the construction of Japan in general. It must really suck to have a permanent physical disability here. I could at least haul myself uncomfortably down the stairs in a penguin-like gait if absolutely necessary. The concept of being wheelchair-bound in such a vertical country doesn't bear thinking on...
In any case, welcome back, my beloved knees. You were sorely missed. Pun very much intended.
-
This entry has been largely to distract myself from the fact that 90% of JSP is going back to America tomorrow, and I will be in the small percentage left behind to wave goodbye as the bus pulls out in about eleven hours. A lot of them are coming back for next semester, but it's still three months off and therefore a fair excuse for angst and distractive rambling.
Also, if anybody needs ideas for a cheap last-minute Xmas gift, I'd love a paid LJ account. XD I promise to bombard you all with (succinct) voice posts if you get me one...which ability would probably also encourage me to post more often...
