Stations of Rehabilitation

“This time is crucial,” the Sensei tell me when I hobble into school on Wednesday. “Please go back home!” And so, while the whole school heads down to the river for the 100th anniversary baseball game, I get in my car and drive to the acupuncturist. He kneads my hamstrings and puts small portable needles in my tight neck muscles, and then I go home where I lay flat on my back for the afternoon. I get up periodically to stretch intensely, so intent am I on limbering myself up and making a day sitting in my chair at school manageable.

Aside from one day to recover from a Gallstone! Attack! in late February, I haven’t taken any sick days in the (almost) two years I’ve been here. Until this week.

Sick days are not taken lightly in Japan. Because the teachers have an abundance of vacation time they’re not allowed to use, they usually put up a couple paid holidays in the face of a sinus infection or the flu. Sick days are left for long stays in the hospital, cancer treatments, back surgery. To take a sick day I must produce proof of purchase in the form of a receipt from the doctor’s office. And this is only for foreigners. In fact, the form I brought back from the doctor’s on Monday–a detailed outline of my condition–is enough for one day of sick leave, but calls are currently in progress to see if it will work for the other day and a half I’ve taken.

The part of this that really fries my pancake is that it’s left up to someone else to judge if I am well or not. I’m treated like an unruly child who has a history of heating thermometers under light bulbs. We’re shaping the young minds of Japan here, we let the students go home after a period of light coughing and a feigned headache, and yet the Sensei, The SENSEI aren’t allowed to leave the building even if a typhoon is howling at the windows. We are, for better or worse, part of a larger organization that needs medical approval for a stomach virus.

[The verdict is in, not much drama to this saga: I have 2 weeks of sick leave. I just have to swing by the doctor's office tomorrow afternoon to pick up the proper form. And perhaps have a little more spider tape stuck to my neck.]

Truthfully, today I’m not doing all that bad, but that’s in comparison to Sunday and Monday where it felt like someone was trying to screw my skull onto my spine. I sleep with towels stuffed under my shoulders, per the doctor’s instructions, and for some reason that has made all of my muscle tightness and turbulence shoot like an arrow down to my gluteous maximus which makes it feel like it’s stuffed into a tightly woven basket of nerve ends.

I’m like a delicate bird trying out its new wings. Was that a twinge in my shoulder? If I move my neck just so, to stretch this muscle, will it snap back to bite my ear? Is this light pain I’m feeling going to morph into hysterical muscle cramping and knots in my neck as punishment for a day spent typing? I have never been so conscious of my shoulders and neck as an area that needed such pampering. Which is perhaps what got me sent to the doctor’s office Monday.

He came highly recommended as O Sensei’s joint specialist, so after a morning spent whimpering on the couch, Johnathan drove me across town, in the pouring rain, for an evaluation. I was in a mildly hallucinagenic state from the pain and so it all sort of runs together in a blur: the plastic orange chairs in the waiting room that smelled like cigarettes, the old people with tinfoil and wet towels wrapped around their knees, the “stations of rehabilitation” set up around the room like an obstacle course with big numerals marking where you were on the spectrum.

We spent about an hour being “next in line” for the doctor (station 1) and eventually I curled up on the pink couch in the fetal position, and that got us some attention. A few nurses led me to a bed where I kicked off my baby pink slippers and flung my arm over my eyes. About two seconds later the doctor came to check on me. “Neck pain, huh?” he said to me, and then to the nurses, “do some x-rays.” They led me to an adjacent cubicle where I was lined up, shot twice, and then taken back to the resting mat.

From these he deduced: my shoulders are lower than they are supposed to be (check), I probably have arm and finger numbness occasionally (check), my neck is chronically tight (check), and all of this points to THORACIC OUTLET SYNDROME. Which I thought was a joke until he showed us the picture book with the English name next to a cartoonish picture of the thoracic cavity. There is no treatment for thoracic outlet syndrome (except The Tea)–there is only prevention. He stuck two graphs of spider tape on either side of my neck, gave me a prescription for The Tea and then sent me on a tour of the rest of the facility.

Nurses stuck hot lights on my small toes (station 2), they laid me on a table and lowered a horrible looking black contraption toward me until an arm shot out and rested near my collarbone (station 3). “This won’t hurt,” they said, turning on the machine. They took off my shirt and rubbed my back with what looked like tuning forks covered in jelly (station 4). I was asked to hold a tuning fork to my jugular while they did this, to keep the blood flowing. Then they showed me one quick shoulder shrug exercise to do (station 5), told me to soak my feet in hot water, and sent us to the exit.

I have to say: I thought I was all into that Eastern Medicine vibe with the natural therapies and rehabilitation clinics around every corner and people walking around with small acupuncture needles stuck to their spine with bandaids. But what I really wanted on Monday was: DRUGS. They gave me a tea meant to loosen up my shoulders, although the jury is still out on whether or not that has aided my recovery. I found that just like every other person in the Western world who falls into a mishap, I wanted a pill that would unscrew my head or at the very least put me to sleep. It was a sad end to the day, trading our pink slippers for shoes and then standing under the small covering of the clinic, me weeping into Johnathan’s shoulders, him trying to comfort me by waving the tea packets in my face. Meanwhile, the rain continued to pour, and is there anything more dreamlike than being in pain while the world is awash in grey and shimmering puddles?

I was in pain. I was in a kind of prolonged intense pain my scoliotic back had never subjected me to before. And it just kept going and going. I hate to be the weak duckling, which is perhaps why it came as a surprise to Ms. Delicious and the Sensei that I’ve been having an 8-year struggle with my back. I’m in the habit of popping a pill when things get bad, but my body has since told me calmly, but firmly, that it’s had enough of that. The pills will not do their duty anymore, and so it means I have to be conscious of my posture and in tune to the natural rhythms of my body, no matter how painful they may be. I’ve brought a pillow to school for my nasty chair, I’m going on walks around the campus with Praju every morning, I’m going to head to the acupuncturist every day after school.

I’m telling you all of this so I can add this advice at the end: DO NOT BE AS STUPID AS I HAVE BEEN. Learn from my mistakes young ones. We’ve had “emergency cleaning” around here the last two mornings in place of reading time. The Sensei shove all the papers into drawers, dust the shelves, re-arrange the magnets on the boards. When we asked why we’re doing this all of a sudden they told us a troupe from the Board of Education is expected for an inspection, hence the urgency. I really wish muscle pain was such an easy thing to deal with, that I could just push a button on my throbbing scapula and my engine would re-set. Instead, I’ve learned a lesson I’ve been trying to dodge for some time now. My body is just a bit more frail than yours or your sister-in-law’s, and even if I tell you–even if I swear to you, looking deep into your eyes–that I can heft the 50 pound suitcase onto the conveyor belt, or that I can type up your 300-page manuscript in an afternoon, DO NOT BE FOOLED. This is just a miscommunication between my brain and my thoracic outlet. My brain wants to go to Amakusa this weekend to spot dolphins with Hana. My thoracic outlet is looking forward to a quiet evening snuggled up with the rice sock.