In with a Bang!

So I had expected to start this blog off with some gross story from a few months ago.. Or at least something with pictures. But today we received a specimen that has probably taken the cake for sheer disturbingness.

It was a leg amputation, below the knee so it wasn't exactly huge. There was a huge open area over the ankle, part of the inside leg and about half the foot. Covering the vertical portion of the gash and stitched into place was this weird.. patch. Like a bandage-looking cloth, stuck tightly to a lump of thick purplish material, then stitched to the edges of the gash. After a cut or two we found out that it was in fact muscle tissue, probably from the gluteus maximus. It seemed like such a weird Frankensteinian scenario, that you would use a chunk of muscle that's completely the wrong size and shape to help a wound heal, but I guess that's part of the practice. Heck, in one place it was actually starting to work.

But then when we moved that lump of muscle, there was another layer of horror. Below the obvious anklebone, there was a shining steel device that connected the metatarsal bone to the heavily-weathered heel bone. It had a number of screws securing it to bones, but it wasn't until closer inspection that I realized there was nothing UNDER that framework. The bone was just plain gone, leaving a gap in the flesh. I'm not sure exactly how they expected that to heal up.. Maybe it would have been a better place to graft some muscle? Either way, the screws that extended into the next bone-set over were decidedly creepy to look at.

Sidenote: This is the first specimen in a long while to give me the jibblies. While the doctor was looking it over and I held the leg in place with my left hand, my right was hiding behind me and twitching like mad, just to express the feelings of utter creepitude that had been witnessed!