Dear Regular Readers (and those not so regular),
I hope you are all managing to stay on top of things and you’re starting to feel that festive spirit bubbling up inside yourselves despite the fact that the Corona virus still has its rather ugly head reared. Christmas is a time for families to come together, only this time around, for almost all of us, it will just be the immediate members and not the extended members that spend time together. Wherever you all are in the world, I truly hope you all make the best of your own individual situations during this very special time of the year and remain healthy and safe until such a time as we are all able to receive our Covid-19 vaccinations. I would like to take this opportunity to wish you all the very best for the festive season ahead and I hope 2021 is a very good year for all of you. As promised, written out below is part 2 of my knee story: Crouch, kneel, ouch! Enjoy!
After turning around and looking out at the mammoth undertaking I had ahead of me to try to get the garden back into some sort of order, I decided that my first port of call would be the vegetable patch, which long since gave way to growing vegetables (in favour of cultivating the types of weeds which require a certain amount of physical strength to unearth), and the small plot of land that the shed used to sit on top of and the bit behind where the shed used to sit, over on the left side of the garden. Once all the weeds had been removed my plan was to dig the soil over with a spade first, then turn it over with a fork and finally give it a good raking over, that has always been my routine. After that, I would remove all the weeds and moss from in between the flags of the garden path, which was always quite a task as the garden path stretches from just underneath the dining room window to the end of the garden: a good 50 meters worth of flags – probably about 20/22 of them all measuring about 36cm x 36cm. After tackling all that lot I then figured it would be time to take a well-earned tea break. So with Graham tackling all things dusty on the floors and above in mum’s bungalow I set about rectifying the garden.
The weeding, digging and raking all went according to planned and the garden was starting to look something like; it was then time to turn my attention to relieving the garden path of the abundance of weeds and garden moss that it had attracted since the last time I’d tended to it. Usually, when tackling the garden path, I would not think twice about kneeling directly down on the floor, but this time I had an old tea towel and of course my usual weeding implements: an old screwdriver and an array of bits of shaped metal that are just right for teasing even the most difficult of weeds out from the most awkward of positions. I crouched down and before kneeling on the hard ground I placed the old tea towel, which was folded over 2/3 times for extra padding for my knees; I then set to work. The general idea was that after removing the weeds and moss from around each of the garden path flags I would simply move back up into a crouching position, pick up the folded tea towel, place it down on the ground before kneeling down and then continue on with the weeding work.
All was going according to planned when all of a sudden I knelt down and I felt the sharpest pain I think I have ever felt in my life shoot through my knee, I can remember shouting something out at the moment of impact, it wasn’t quite the ouch word, rather a slightly more profane version of it, which drew the attention of the next door neighbour who happened to be out in the garden. It was so painful that I immediately stood up and put my hand on my knee, I quickly rolled up the left leg of my pants to see what damage had been done, but apart from the lingering very sharp pain and a bit of redness in the middle of my kneecap everything looked fine, no cuts or blood, just a bruise waiting to come out. I stared down at the floor and it was then that I realized what had happened, instead of kneeling down on the folded up tea towel I had kneeled directly down onto the ground and unfortunately between my unprotected knee and the ground was a small very sharp stone which I had invariably kneeled on with all my weight pushing down on it. The stone did not pierce my skin, but as I later found out upon my return to Japan, by kneeling on the stone with all my weight the stone had been pushed quite far in to the soft tissue that surrounds my kneecap and as a result it had touched the prepatellar bursa.
What’s that then? I here you ask, well a bursa is a part of the body that you really don’t want to be upsetting or arguing with because if you do your chances of winning the argument are very slim indeed. If you ask plumbers, carpet fitters, housemaids or any other people that have occupations that involve a lot of kneeling on the floor they will tell you that you want to do all in your power to make sure you protect your knees from problems associated with your bursa or bursae. Apparently, there are about 140 bursae located in our bodies, they are situated where muscles and tendons move over areas that are bony such as joints. The function of bursa or bursae is to reduce the friction that is created when muscles and tendons move against skin and bones, bursa or bursae also help to facilitate movement; each bursa is filled with synovial fluid which provides the cushioning action and it is this fluid that can leak out of the bursa if the bursa gets damaged or infected.
After the pain had subsided, I continued on with my weeding on auto pilot and thought nothing more about it; the only thing on my mind was my mum’s recent passing and nothing else seemed to matter. I did mention it to Graham later on that day about what had happened when we were evaluating how much hard work that we’d done, but it was only in passing. Little did I know that within a week of returning to Japan my knee would be swollen beyond comprehension and full of synovial fluid, and that I would saddled with a bursitis (medical term for housemaids knee or water on the knee) problem that would hinder my job and prevent me from doing some of the things I love to do for the best part of a very stressful 18 months of my life. To be continued and concluded in the new year.
