Contagious!

Patchwork and quilting have been on hold since the beginning of June... I have barely been up in my sewing room except to let Vel and Cleo out during the day. (Toi and Patora are banished to the Tetsu's cat house... Toi loves it out there. Patora is even now, complaining.)

Before even GETTING to the hospital I had worked on two Alabama Beauty blocks from my confinement chair. And once those were done I made "kits" to take along with me to the hospital. Those three blocks got done in a matter of days. So five more blocks.

Unfortunately, since coming home my templates have gotten lost in the shuffle of papers and stuff used in the hospital so the Alabama Beauty blocks are on hold again. That may be for the better because there are probably enough blocks to sew together into a quilt... if I could just come up with a layout idea. I have dark blocks and light blocks which at one point I thought was going to be a good idea but I'm not so sure now...

My hospital roommate, Mrs. Kikuchi longingly mentioned while watching me piece my final Alabama block, that she wished she had thought to bring handwork to do during her hospital stay. But she laughed and said she's never had time to do any handwork even when she was at home (she and her husband run a mom-and-pop shop) so she didn't have any materials anyway.

Mrs. Kikuchi is unfortunately being shifted back and forth from major hospitals while doctors try to decide how to treat her so she probably won't be home for awhile... I asked Tetsu to bring me some of my extra fabric ("grab a handful of anything from one of the drawers!") and my last day in the hospital I showed Mrs. Kikuchi how to trace around the template and hand piece. I got her started on the simplest 9-patch and I cut out lots of 2 1/2 inch squares while she practiced the basics of piecing. See! I'm contagious!

I really would have liked to spend a couple more days with her and pass on a little more of my patchwork enthusiasm but anyway I left her with pins, needles, thread, pin-cushion, template, sandpaper board and fabric. Can you see how she is attached to an IV but still trying to piece her first 9-patch block without getting tangled up? I hope I'll be able to visit her next week when I have to go to the hospital for a post-op checkup.

Enough

While I was in the hospital I thought it was going to be a great time to lose some weight. The meals were certainly conducive to weight loss! Simple is a gentle way of describing the menu!

That's not to say that I didn't enjoy the meals. I did. Because there wasn't much to do all day, we patients on the orthopedic ward looked forward to the three meals and gobbled down all that was set before us. And it was enough! In fact, if I think of a word to describe my one week hospital stay, the word would be "Enough". The hospital wasn't glamorous but people were being healed. It was enough. The food wasn't restaurant standards, but patients were filled and nourished. It was enough. I learned how much more I eat than I really need! (Of course I burn a few more calories in my normal daily life but even so...)

So here are a few pictures of my meals while in the hospital. I think I took a picture of each meal but I guess you don't want to see 23 pictures of hospital trays.

This was a typical breakfast tray. There was either two slices of bread or else a large hot dog bun... And jam. And either a cold sausage or slice of ham with chopped cabbage on the side or in this case, stewed cabbage and egg. And milk.

I noticed some people got rice gruel instead of the bread but I guess the nurses decided I'd probably prefer bread rather than gruel.

This was a pretty fancy lunch one day. When the nurses brought it in my roommates and I all let out an "Ooh. Noodles for lunch!"

Cold noodles, dipping broth, grated radish and chopped mushrooms, deep fried fish cakes. Orange slices.

And this was a typical dinner menu. Simmered slice of codfish. Cucumber and boiled cabbage, radish and carrot salad. A big serving of rice! And grapefruit slices.

I noticed when leaving the hospital that the bill included a meal fee for about $70. I stayed 8 days in the hospital and had 23 meals. 23 meals for $70! Pretty reasonable!!!

You can see how I might expect to lose some weight... but I didn't. And now that I'm home my friends keep bringing me fancy cakes... And I'm not up to walking great distances nor back at the pool...

Hospital food was enough. Now I'm struggling with over abundance!

Paper cranes

I am gradually getting back into the rhythm of cleaning and cooking. Here I have time to clean but can't really get down low enough to do scrubbing. Pushing the vacuum cleaner is about my level right now.

Tetsu has forbidden me to walk Choco. Too bad we were never able to train to her to walk quietly by our side. She lunges and pulls and changes directions in an instant. She also never has warmed up to other people so I can't even ask my other dog walking friends to take her out for a tandem jaunt with their dogs... Poor Choco. The best I can do right now is go out to her yard and at arm's distance give her a good brushing everyday. She needs it! Look at all that shed fur on the ground! For a dog with a short coat she sheds like crazy!!! I guess for the rest of the summer Choco is not going to get an afternoon walk... She'll have to be satisfied with quality brushing time.

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Yesterday's post ended with my roommates and me doing origami (paper folding), one of Japan's traditional childhood pleasures. As a matter of fact, in our room there was a lovely (faded) decoration of a thousand folded cranes hanging by the window. This decoration has been there awhile according to my roommate who was hospitalized in the same room last year also. And no, I did not count all the cranes to come up with number 1000.


I wrote this post in 2007 if you want to read how the tradition of making cranes got started. I imagine that the cranes in our hospital room had been made by a group of friends for someone who was hospitalized... prayers for a quick recovery... and then the person left it at the hospital to cheer on other temporary hospital residents. It was lovely to look at and wonder about how the person who received it is doing now...

Can you tell how the origami cranes have been stacked and then strung together probably in groups of 100? If you make one crane (Haru-chan's table in yesterday's post had single origami cranes on it...) the wings can be spread and it will stand alone. All together like this is a little difficult to distinguish each crane but the message is clear to any Japanese.

"Get well soon!"

...and I did!

Activities

It is a rainy day today and so I resisted going out for a walk with Tetsu and Choco. I am slow but I can walk! In fact I went cat and dog food shopping yesterday (drove the car!) and in my most helpless voice asked a stock boy to carry my 15 pounds of dog food and extra large bag of cat food to the cashier for me. He very kindly carried it out to the car for me too!

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Back to hospital life.

After the first night in post-op, I was moved into a 6 patient room and spent the rest of the week making friendships and appreciating the hospital staff. On the orthopedic ward there is a variety of injuries and I quickly learned that torn cartilage of the knee (my problem) is one of the lesser injuries that need to be treated.

From beginning to end, one of my roommates , Mrs. Kikuchi, was in the bed across from me. She was in the hospital for a hip replacement that somehow got delayed because of complications. She spent her whole time cheerfully attached to an IV and we shared books and cookies that visitors brought in. (She flattered me by assuming I could read her books.)

Two obaachans (old grandmas), both 93 were in the hospital because of broken hips... Both were very clear minded but Haru-chan was bright and smiling to everybody while Kawada-san was angry at the world and especially at the hospital. It made a world of difference in how they were treated and how we interacted with them. Haru-chan was always thanking people and being apologetic about the care she needed, Kawada-san was always muttering about the slow care. To Haru-chan, student nurses flocked asking if she remembered their names etc. To Kawada-san, if someone asked her a question she would ignore them completely or complain that they had disrupted her sleep...

Two of my roommates were also in the hospital for torn knee cartilage and so we compared notes on the doctors' different methods of treatment or our own symptoms. I was very grateful for Mrs. Takanohashi who was operated on three days after me but was up and walking a day before me!

"How can you be walking already?! I've got to get rid of these crutches and get moving!"

Thanks to Mrs. Takanohashi, I found a good rival who spurred me to be more courageous in taking my first steps.

Up and down the hallway the rooms were filled with people that needed to be wheeled back and forth to the bathrooms causing a lot of extra work for the nurses. Many, MANY of the older patients were in various stages of dementia and throughout the days and nights we could hear them calling for family members or just lost in their confusion. The nurses patiently cared for them but I learned anew how hard it is to care for people that don't even realize they are in pain or need to be careful. Patients escaping from beds, playing with toilet paper, removing IVs or refusing to eat. And the nurses were putting in hours from 4:30 pm to 12:00 noon the next day! How they could continue to be cheerful I don't know!

Most of us patients became bored very quickly... I made my three Alabama beauty blocks within a couple of days and was left with no handwork. But some student nurses assigned to Haru-chan were helping her do origami and gradually the origami classes extended to the rest of us who wanted to try. We had so much fun and were all very proud to show each new creation we'd made! Just like little children.

"Look! Look! I made a heart!"

"Can you tell that this is supposed to be a snail?"

"Haru-chan! Wow! You can make a crane from memory!"

For all the pain-killers and IVs and physical therapy, our hospital room stayed active and cheerful from beginning to end. (Hopefully that was good for Mrs. Kawada...)

(← 93 year old Haru-chan making a crane.)

Tadaima

Tadaima~~~! (That means "I'm home~~!" in Japanese.)

I set a somewhat wobbly foot into the house yesterday afternoon and have been calling people and putting things in order since then. I'm ready for some blogging time!

I had to laugh when I saw how Leiya and Yanna-chan took on the duties of blogging with such gusto! My goodness! They jumped right in didn't they?! It sounded like they had a lot of fun looking at their lives from an outsider's view and I know they must have been tickled pink to get so many comments and so much encouragement. I'm grateful to you all for supporting them!

So... Do you want to hear about how MY week went? I kept my camera handy the whole time but I'm afraid the scenery didn't change much as the days went by. Still... this could become a long post... Or several long posts.

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Tetsu took me to the general hospital on Tuesday morning and signed me into Admissions. Then upstairs I was taken to the post-op room and made ready for surgery. As we waited for the nurse to bring me a gown and do other nursing things Tetsu raised his eyebrows and said,

"Maybe we should have gone to a different hospital..."

How I laughed at that! Too late now! Here I am!

Tetsu was referring to the appearance of the room. Now let me make something clear. Japan has some wonderfully modern, clean, efficient hospitals. Japanese technology ranks among the highest in the world.

BUT... this particular hospital has seen better days... to put it mildly. Tetsu's raised eyebrows were in response to the cracks in the floor and the water stains on the walls, the drooping frayed curtains, the pipes along the ceiling, the greyness of the halls. It turns out that this hospital is over 60 years old and is slowly being rebuilt. In four years the city will have a lovely, new, modern, hospital, but for now, the ward that I was in was nearly out of Dickens.

Hallways were dark (extra dark because the hospital is trying to support Japan's Save Energy movement that has been seriously put into effect after the March earthquake.)

The one sink that serves 40 patients on the ward is heated by an old boiler with a sign posted to not open any windows because the pilot light would blow out!


There was only one elevator servicing 5 floors and there was a constant traffic jam of wheelchairs, beds (transporting bedridden patients to the bowels of the hospital) linen carts, meal shelves, nurses and visitors who lined up waiting for the creaky elevator to arrive. (I noticed that doctors never had time to wait for the elevator and bounded up and down the 5 flights of stairs.)


On one of my trips to the bathroom, (one women's and one men's... two toilets in each) I noticed this little arrangement... a cockroach catcher. I never saw any cockroaches though...

Thankfully, the dreariness was only in the ward... from what I could see (and I couldn't see much as I had to remove my contact lenses) the operating room was as modern as you can get and my brief interval there was pain free and comfortable. (Why I had to be completely naked to have my knee operated on, I don't know, but if it makes it easier for the doctors, go right ahead and observe my whole body!) I never did really know who was doing the operating because people kept talking to me from different parts of the room but I recognized the young woman doctor's voice whom I'd first seen.

Here I am, an hour and 40 minutes later... No kiss from Tetsu, but a smile and a pat on the head...




And there I was left until the next morning.... Me and my IV....

My mother is back :) She is eager to get back to you guys, so this will probably be our last post! Thank you for being so kind and generous with your comments- we're thinking of starting a blog of our own!

Hey everybody, this is Yanna. We felt terrible for not posting anything last night, but we went out to a bar! We decided to take a night off from school, boys, stress, and the world. Leiya knew that I had been feeling a little down after my best friend moved to San Diego for a summer internship (we're in Ohio), so she took me on a 'date'! We got all dressed up and went to a place called Bar Louie. It is a bar, but also a pretty nice restaurant. We ate sooo much food, and by the time we got home, we were too tired to make the treck out to the union. Instead, we fell asleep in the living room and didn't get to bed until the wee hours of the morning.

Here are some pictures of us, do you think we look alike? In the past, we've had several comments from random strangers that we look like sisters! In addition to my dad. But we don't see that at all! I am 5'4" and Yanna is 5'1". I am mostly Japanese and Yanna's a true american mixture. We take the comments as a compliment and pretend like we are realated :)

We had a lot of fun writing the blog, thank you for your encouragement and support! We will stop by in the future! I will try to send my mom some pictures more often to keep you guys updated on our lives!

See you soon,

Love, Leiya and Yanna.

soo close, but soo far away...

No words from Tetsu-san :( Probably too busy going back and forth between work and the hospital. Yanna and I are wondering what to write on the blog... We realized that our life is too boring to talk about lol. I personally don't get bored easy so I just entertain myself with things like watching movies, cooking, sleeping, and walk around in the nice weather. And the ultimate treat of going to Panera Bread! (That's what I did today :)

We have been having some problems with this blog... First, we had trouble posting pictures. Then, as you may have noticed, our formatting for our very first blog was a little off. I think we've fixed the problem, but only time will tell! Then, of course, since we don't have the internet at our apartment, we have been running all over town, and all over campus, trying to find a good connection. We have now settled quite nicely in the breezeway of the Student Union Building. The building itself is closed, but here in the breezeway, we can still get an excellent connection any time of night. It does seem like a cruel joke though that there are comfortable chairs just feet away, safely behind a wall of glass, while we are sitting on the hard floor lol.