Pages

Friday, May 27, 2011

Sculpture and the Foot

How do you repair a shattered calcaneus (your heel bone) ?
Very carefully.
These X-rays deserve a labeling of Architectural Sculpture of the highest level.

The surgery that will enable B. to walk again seems to be an exquisite combination of fine jewelry making and a box of drywall screws. 

 

Think about how the surgeon had to spatially understand that calcaneus bone.

He knew it intimately in it's shattered fragments and kept in mind how to reassemble them back into a functional bone. He had to plan the screw placement to use just the right number of them and place each one so that none of them ran into another. Add to that performance the element of a ticking clock,  a suffering patient, and a very small working area.


That's all in a day's work for the good doctor who probably doesn't think of his work as sculpture.
I do.




3 comments:

Sherrie York said...

Wow. Just wow.

Theresa Cheek said...

ditto Sherrie...!

patrickgracewood said...

Theresa, this is a cautionary tale to use ladders wisely!