Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Unscrewed Leg

They took the screws out of my leg... Lots of fun, got to meet some nice people in the hospital. I really like the guy holding the mask right before the lights went out, it all seemed quite pleasant.

4 comments:

forkev said...

crazy!
hows the leg feel?

Daniel said...

It kinda hurts and it's still swollen.

Unknown said...

are those allen, torx, or some strange star head on those screws? I'm making the leap that they'd be stupid to use Phillips.

I was discussing with jen the dangers of the screw stripping out. it probably didn't bind with the bone that hard (some special anti-bone growing coating?) so it was easier to remove?

Daniel said...

They are standard hex head screws. There was a risk that the bone had grown into the screws so they would not come out or the screws would break. Doctors typically use hand tools to remove screws to avoid in massive ooopses that power tools can cause.

If the screws wouldn't come out they would have just cut the offending end off of the other side of my leg where it was causing trouble.

It's not uncommon for screws / tools / drill bits etc... to break when working with bones. A guy I work with had a radial fracture on his femur and when they put the hardware in a drill bit broke when it hit another screw. So now he has a mass of screws and a partial drill bit in his leg.