Start with a Seasonal Comment

That's how you start a letter in Japanese: Recently it's gotten really cold, hasn't it? Did go see the leaves changing colour? The momiji (Japanese maple) trees look really beautiful now. It started snowing in the mountains.

As it stands now, those are all true. It temperature has dropped quite quickly recently. The leaves of the Ginko trees are a beautiful yellow and are covering the ground surrounding them. The Momiji leaves are a brilliant red, and a few have just started to fall. (They are quite resistant to the cold, and many leaves hang on until the snow starts coming down.) The amazing Karamatsu pine trees are changing colour. (That is right, these pine trees have needles which change to brilliant reds and yellows every winter.) And yes, the peaks of northern Nagano were dusted with white the other morning. This is Autumn in Japan.

The concept of seasons and temperature is such a regional idea. The weather in Vancouver has been colder than Nagano for the last few months. Your leaves are already falling, or have been whipped off the trees by the new November weather of high winds. Most of the leaves here have just recently started to drop, and the temperature as well. Our nights and mornings are finally colder than those of Vancouver. While a few nights of negative temperature would signal the onset of winter back at home, here it is the mark of mid-autumn. Even the first snows are not enough to have people thinking we are in winter.

Winter is getting closer to being around the corner, however. The next few weekends will be busy for the residents of northern Nagano. Yard and houses will begin being prepared for the coming season. Seasonal plants will be removed, one that live through the winter will be given protection from heavy snow and cold, kotatsus will be started, and heaters fuelled and fired up. In the mountainous areas windows will be boarded up to protect them from the weight of the ensuing snow. The turn of autumn is not just evident in the plants, but in the life here as well.

For me this signals the last push. My leg has been getting stronger and stronger, as the few hours of physiotherapy I do everyday are starting to show some improvement. Living free of my DonJoy has been simply euphoric. My knee feels strong and stable, most of the time. There are still the moments when I worry that a twist or a back-pedal will have me in the hospital again, but I think these are more in my head than my joint. Also the screws in my leg have been sensitive to the cold recently. A wise friend (with the experience of a large plate and half a dozen screws in his leg) told me that your body has a hard time making calcium around metal, and that minuscule gap is enough for the metal to expand and contract, causing the pain. Despite that, I have joined the gym again to ride the bikes, run, and swim. I don't have the time to do it, but I feel my knee needs the dynamic exercise that my at-home-physio isn't providing, so the time will have to come from somewhere (probably sleep). This push will continue strong until early December. That is when Judgement Day comes.

No, this is not some movie about robots from the future coming back in time to save humanity from impending disaster. This is me going back to my least favourite place in Nagano: Matsushiro General Hospital. On December 6^th I have my next appointment with Dr. Horiuchi. Short of staying there and experiencing the joys of the nurses and the food, I will have a full course.

I will lie down on a slightly padded plastic tray, and have the lower half of my body inserted into a large white plastic orifice. Then, as a reminiscent of about a thousand of those old-school force-fed-paper computer printers drones, magnetic waves will be passed through my knee, creating a resonance image that looks something like this:

I will be strapped to a chair and my leg will have to glide through the full range of extension and flexion, with the resistance getting harder and harder. I will also be made to walk a two metre plank (thankfully no hungry sharks at the other end) again and again, making sure that my footfalls are in a specific location, but while still keeping my gate normal. Finally, I will lie on a bed and my knee will be twisted and tweaked, extended and flexed, while Dr. Horiuchi searches for problems in my knee.

After all these tests, I will finally be a person again, or at least I will be treated like one again. Dr. Horiuchi will sit down, pull out the beautiful images of my knee, read all the lines of data about my strength and balance, and take the feel from his physical manipulation of my joint, and he will make an assessment about my knee. If all is good he will say something like this: “Your knee condition is good. Your course is excellent.”

Those are the words I am working so hard towards. Those are the words that will open my life back up. Those are the words that will begin my full return to sport. They won't free me from the hours of sitting alone lifting ankle weights, and doing squats, but they will mean that the countless hours I have already spent in that fashion have achieved the goal I had in mind. Those words will mean that the days of my winter will not be spent in my house feeling down, but rather up on the slopes learning once again how to ride my snowboard.

But that is looking too far ahead. For now I have to focus on doing that physio everyday, on making my leg even stronger, and on making that possibility into my reality. It has never been hard to quit or slack off...but in the end neither of those is really an option. I know the result I am looking for, and nothing but my hard work can make that a reality. This is it, as fall starts to wane into winter, I press on with my final push.