Spare Parts.

[Soulrev]

I feel a lot of doctors are too quick to suggest surgery.

Here, here. When I broke my hand (5th metacarpal to be more specific) the doctor told me it's imperative that I get a small surgical procedure to have pins put in so the bone would heal correctly. Well, I don't do well with the idea of ANY surgical procedure, so I expressed my discomfort and asked if he really thought I needed pins, that it wouldn't heal fine on it's own.

He said "I would advise you get pins put in because you may never have normal use of your hand again if you don't".. Well, knowing I'm going into the military, they don't take too kindly to ANY medical problem in your past, including pins in bones and what-not. So I told the doctor to fuck off and wrap it up and send me on my way. I saw my own x-ray and knew better than what he was telling me. I've broken bones before, this was no immaculate fracture, just a nice clean break.

To make a long story short about 1 year later my hand is just as good as it was before I broke it, no signs of troubles what-so-ever. I think doctors try this shit just because they want the paycheck. I didn't have insurance, either, so that was a major deciding factor. I still have a 750 dollar bill to the doctor, after paying the 300 dollar hospital charge. Imagine what I would be forking out for surgery on top of that..

Oh, I also cut my own cast off. I was working a midnight shift the night before my appointment to get it removed and needless to say I overslept and missed my appointment. I called them around 1 o'clock in the afternoon on a Friday, just 2 hours after I was supposed to be there, and they told me how I'm going to have to wait until the next Friday to get squeezed in to the doctor's office, because we all know how long it takes to cut off a cast and x-ray it again, a whopping 20 minutes. Well after wearing the cast for 6 weeks already I was rather anxious to get it off, so I said fuck it and busted out the dremel tool and started cutting away. Then, I took the cast and burned it because I was fuckin vengeful towards that thing. Apparently it takes like 2 gallons of gas to generate enough heat to melt a cast, just fyi.

[BrassFusion]

I think it's possible the surgery wasn't necessary, but how can you really know if your bone's as strong as it was before? I mean, you could stress-test it against your other hand, but that would sort of defeat the purpose...

[Soulrev]

Well I use my hands a lot (I'm a gearhead always working on cars and stuff) and so far I haven't noticed any problems at all.

[BrassFusion]

Point is, you won't really know if the bone knit like it should've until and unless it breaks again. We all wish we were doctors... but we're not.

[Soulrev]

Well, if it does, that sucks.