X-Rays, as promised:
In this shot, you can kinda make out the fibula fracture, and you can very, very clearly see all the devastation to my tibia. It is most obvious towards the bottom of the image, but if you look closely you can see the fractures going all the way up to the top of the tibial plateau.
I included this one so you can see how cocked up my kneecap was..
Interestingly enough, this post-op shot actually does a better job of accentuating the damage, mostly because debris has been cleared away. You can very clearly see the fibula fracture, and you can also see the 10 pins (previously thought to be 11 [Update: There actually are 11 screws]) holding my leg together, as well as the plate.
I will make some annotated versions of these images this weekend to point out some things of interest.
Geez, man… I didn’t realize that your leg bones exploded. I thought it was just a fracture…
:(
Yeah, at some point I stopped saying “I broke my leg”, and started saying “I shattered my knee”, because it did a better job of conveying the devastation. :)
Your leg is the current topic of discussion in the office. Holy sweet jeeb.us! What material are the screws?
Titanium.
Boy are you going to have fun at the airport from now on.
Titanium is non-ferrous and shouldn’t be picked up by the metal detectors.
IIRC, they work by inducing a slight current in the metal, and detecting the magnetic field from that. The metal itself doesn’t have to be ferrous to be detected.
Reference
Possibly, but I have read that even the titanium Hip and Knee replacements only sometimes set them off, and I have much less metal in my knee than those, so I guess we’ll see….
The doctor said he thought i’d be fine. Regardless, all I have to do is lift my leg and show them the footlong scar and I think I will be OK. :P
You know, this will provide you with excellent opportunities to smuggle knives inside your leg! They’d never suspect it…
:)
Do I know any of these people, or did you just point them at your “crazy friend’s broken leg”? :)
You can find all my leg-related entries here
I just pointed them to my crazy friend’s
brokenshattered leg ;)I saw the first two images the “day of the accident”; they were taken at Loon Mountain. The third one (with the pins) is crazy! I’m glad that your recovery is going well, though.