Surgical word of the Day
Fracture…. Or more specifically Calcaneous fracture. This is the rather large heel bone in the back of your foot. This bone is responsible for most of your weight bearing, and can effect your gait forever if it doesn’t heal properly. This fracture is rather common in the Northwest. Most men, and a few women, usually climb up on the roof to clean, put up Christmas lights, work on their rain gutters and inevitably falls off their ladder. I got a sad fellow last night who had fallen off his house and suffered bilateral calcaneous fractures. The older orthopedic surgeons call this a “whorehouse fracture” because it was common in the western days. A lot of men would suffer this fracture when they’d jump out of the second floor of a whorehouses, barefoot, to escape the long arm of the law. For us, it is a relatively simple fix. We place a few heavy cannulated screws into each heel to hold the heel bone in place in order to heal.
A couple of these to break up the emergency surgical monotony and it’s a good night.
A Nurse With Attitude 