The Surgery Show

I was thrilled when Doctor Foot Doctor offered to supply pictures of my surgery, though I was admittedly a little apprehensive. Fascinating or nauseating? I’ve certainly received plenty of views on that question. And better, I’ve heard that thanks to these pictures, my readership has extended to some interesting places! Overall, The Surgery Show has been a great hit.

A couple years back I had a hernia repaired. Beforehand, I searched the web for some pictures, being the naturally curious type, and wondering what exactly they intended to do to me. Quick lesson: abdominal surgery is not pretty. After a few shots, uh, you don’t want to go there anymore.

But somehow biomechanics held fascination. And the possibility of seeing my very own foot, and the subsequent understanding of the work done, held even more. I found the pictures truly amazing and not at all nauseating, an opinion helped, I’m sure, by the relatively bloodless environment of the foot under tourniquet. But there’s no other way I could have appreciated what my crack surgical team did without seeing those shots. And the shot of the thread-thin remaining strand of the once thick and meaty tendon spoke a thousand words.

And the reactions! You’d think I was posting porn, the span of awe versus disgust! My first few post-surgical ventures out were to our church, since I’ve got folk band practice on Tuesdays plus of course our “weekend gig”, so the first people to hear about these shots were my church crowd. My band-mates know my obsessive side and so weren’t at all surprised at this image-posting twist. But to my surprise, my pastor was utterly thrilled, exclaiming, “I love surgeries!” His glee was doubled when he learned that the photographer was one of his parishioners! I won’t identify that person any further to keep the HIPAA lawyers happy, but another huge thank you to you.

My co-workers have had all kinds of reactions, which I’ve absolutely loved. In short, this has been way too much fun! You have to turn your head at the car wreck, you can’t help it. Even at today’s office holiday luncheon – my first foray back to our sales office – they’d express amazement or disgust, but in either case hustle over with sandwiches and potato salad in hand and glue their eyes to that sliced wheel, that mangled tendon, that curious strip of decellularized equine pericardium.

But the best bonus of all was hearing today that my blog posting made it back to none other than the makers of that strip of equine linguini, Pegasus Biologics. Apparently they like to see pictures of their product in action (and who wouldn’t?), and it was easy to pass on the blog, resulting in a few new eyeballs scanning my prose within their hallowed halls. Pegasus folks, if you’re still reading, hats off to you. I’m thankful for your work and your product, and honored at you attention. And if this thing actually heals up strong like I hope, I’ll be doubly so. Just one question, though: Was that horse a thoroughbred?