Keigo Honoki: His Wife Learned How To Put His Shoulder Back In

Keigo Honoki dislocated his shoulder sliding into a base. It came out again. And again. More than ten times, eventually during ordinary daily activity rather than sport. His wife learned to put it back in for him. He has had two arthroscopic Bankart repairs. He never played competitive baseball again, the sport he had built his childhood around. That injury is why he became a shoulder surgeon. Keigo talks about the Japanese medical system and a training path that looks nothing like the Australian one. The account of Japanese schooling is remarkable. Cram school from the age of eight, five hours a night after ordinary school, finishing at eleven. Later, a three hour daily round trip by train, every hour of it spent studying. He left home at 6:30am so he could study before class started. He also explains something counterintuitive. Because Japan's health system is public and salaries barely differ between specialties, orthopaedics is not the fiercely contested field it is in Australia or the United States. He simply chose it. The clinical thread is arthroscopic latarjet surgery, which he had never seen before arriving in Brisbane and which remains uncommon in Japan. He is frank that he does not yet feel confident performing it alone, and equally frank that he applied for this fellowship three or four years running before he was accepted.