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This clever tattoo by Valio Ska makes good use of amputation scarring, don’t you think? Kudos to the owner for his sense of humor.
Dugan Smith of Fostoria, Ohio, was ten years old when he was diagnosed with bone cancer. After chemotherapy, his leg was removed, but part of it was reattached -backward!
Known as a rotationplasty, his surgery involved removing a large section of his right leg that surrounded the tumour – from below his knee to about mid-thigh – then reattaching the lower limb to the shortened upper thigh.
The twist, so to speak, is that Dugan’s lower leg was rotated 180 degrees and sewn on backwards.
His ankle now acts as his knee, his calf has replaced the lower part of his thigh and his backwards-facing foot slips into a prosthetic and powers the reversed muscles and joint with an up-and-down motion.
“I’ll be able to play basketball and baseball – baseball’s my favourite sport,” says Dugan, a seventh grader who pitches and plays first base on his junior high school’s baseball team in Fostoria, Ohio. “Just knowing I would be able to play those made my mind go straight at it.”
It took 18 months of physical therapy for Dugan to learn a new way to use his leg. Now 13, he is playing baseball again. Link -via J-Walk Blog
Ming Li was on her way to school when a tractor ran over her and severed her left hand. Doctors in China thought the hand could be saved, but the arm was too damaged for reattachment. So they grafted the hand to Ming’s leg in to keep it alive! After three months of repair and healing, the 9-year-old’s arm was judged to be ready for the hand.
Dr Hou Jianxi, spokesman for the hospital in Zhengzhou, Henan Province, said the hand had now been transplanted back on to her arm.
“When she came in, her left hand was completely severed from her body. It was very scary,” he told the Zhoukou Evening Post.
“But Ming Li can now move her wrist again and her left hand is a healthy pink colour proving that the blood is circulating well.”
With therapy and additional surgery, doctors believe she will be able to use the hand for most normal activities. Link -via Breakfast Links
At a site south of Paris, France, archaeologists Cécile Buquet-Marcon and Anaick Samzun discovered what they believe to be evidence of a successful and intentional arm amputation:
The man, who lived in the Linearbandkeramik period, when European hunter-gatherers began subsistence farming, was found to be missing his forearm and hand bones.[...]
Pain-killing plants such as the hallucinogenic Datura are likely to have been used in the operation, and the wound was probably cleaned using antiseptic herbs like sage, the scientists said.
“I don’t think you could say that those who carried out the operation were doctors in the modern sense that they did only that, but they obviously had medical knowledge,” Mrs Buquet-Marcon said.
Link | Photo: Stephanie Watson
Andre chewed off his front left and rear left paws to escape an illegal trap he encountered in Alaska. He then lived for weeks hiding under a camper shell. The Shepherd-Rottweiler-Lab mix was taken in by Alaskan Dog and Puppy Rescue, who contacted a company named OrthoPets to see if they could help. A year later, Andre has received his prosthetic legs in Denver, Colorado. Martin Kaufmann of OrthoPets says Andre stood up just two days after his new legs were attached.
“This is the first time that Andre has been able to stand on four legs in over a year and a few months now, so it will be an interesting challenge as he learns, instead of having to survive with two legs how he can actually thrive on all four,” said Kaufmann.
For a second he hesitated, and then Andre hopped up and started running around like any dog with four legs would.
“It’s just such an amazing moment to see this guy who’s learned how to be very adaptive on two legs and watch how fast he’s able to go back to four legs. Just feels good to see he’s able to be normal again, such a proud moment,” Kaufmann said.
Andre will go up for adoption in a few weeks. Link -via Arbroath
