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plastics, wk 1 day 2
plastic surgery is CRAZY. today's case: reconstruction of paralyzed face with cross-face nerve grafting with sural nerve.
in layman's terms: face was paralyzed (main trunk of facial nerve was taken out from a prior surgery, so we wanted to cut out a nerve from the leg and attach it so that the patient would be able to smile and have a normal facial expression at rest.
the op took seven hours.
still, this was some crazy stuff. just cutting one side of the face and lifting the skin flap of the face to see stuff underneath is neckhair-raising. it's completely different from working on cadavers cause the person in front of you is alive, breathing, and you've got half his face up in the air. the movie face-off kept coming to mind.
at some point in life, i heard that nerves can't be repaired. i'm sure a class during 2nd yr of med school must have taught otherwise, but i guess i didn't pay attn then because i was completely floored when i understood what they were attempting to do.
turns out, that the facial nerve was a mess of a stump because it had been too long since the previous surgery, and the pt had undergone extensive radiation as well, leaving a mass of scar tissue. so we had to abandon the original plan, and went with plan B, which was to detach a portion of the temporalis muscle (muscle that runs from jaw to termple) from the temple and attach it to the mouth, to make smiling possible.
to do this, we had to go quite deep, and literally scrap one end of this muscle away from the skull itself. there it was, bare naked white skull of a LIVING MAN, right in front of me. too weird.
when we were done, all the guy had were some stitches. that's it. that's the worse from a big big operation. and in a little while, this man, who previously had a distorted, droopy face causing mental stress, depression, etc, etc, will have a relatively normal face and be able to smile. amazing.
i'm still a little in awe of what we did. the boldness of the moves, the decisions, the knowledge it took, and that it was successful. that we had his skull exposed. that we had half his face lifted up, put it back, and you can't tell.
CRAZY.
******
"Pride is spiritual cancer: it eats up the very possibility of love, or contentment, or even common sense."
Mere Christianity
yakob at 10:47 PM
-----------------
plastic surgery is CRAZY. today's case: reconstruction of paralyzed face with cross-face nerve grafting with sural nerve.
in layman's terms: face was paralyzed (main trunk of facial nerve was taken out from a prior surgery, so we wanted to cut out a nerve from the leg and attach it so that the patient would be able to smile and have a normal facial expression at rest.
the op took seven hours.
still, this was some crazy stuff. just cutting one side of the face and lifting the skin flap of the face to see stuff underneath is neckhair-raising. it's completely different from working on cadavers cause the person in front of you is alive, breathing, and you've got half his face up in the air. the movie face-off kept coming to mind.
at some point in life, i heard that nerves can't be repaired. i'm sure a class during 2nd yr of med school must have taught otherwise, but i guess i didn't pay attn then because i was completely floored when i understood what they were attempting to do.
turns out, that the facial nerve was a mess of a stump because it had been too long since the previous surgery, and the pt had undergone extensive radiation as well, leaving a mass of scar tissue. so we had to abandon the original plan, and went with plan B, which was to detach a portion of the temporalis muscle (muscle that runs from jaw to termple) from the temple and attach it to the mouth, to make smiling possible.
to do this, we had to go quite deep, and literally scrap one end of this muscle away from the skull itself. there it was, bare naked white skull of a LIVING MAN, right in front of me. too weird.
when we were done, all the guy had were some stitches. that's it. that's the worse from a big big operation. and in a little while, this man, who previously had a distorted, droopy face causing mental stress, depression, etc, etc, will have a relatively normal face and be able to smile. amazing.
i'm still a little in awe of what we did. the boldness of the moves, the decisions, the knowledge it took, and that it was successful. that we had his skull exposed. that we had half his face lifted up, put it back, and you can't tell.
CRAZY.
******
"Pride is spiritual cancer: it eats up the very possibility of love, or contentment, or even common sense."
Mere Christianity
yakob at 10:47 PM