Today I was back in the Raleigh Orthopedics Clinic with Dr. Logel and it was nice to be back to something I was familiar with. I saw some of the same cases as I had seen previously and some new ones, but the ones that were the most interesting to me were a crushed foot, a huge ganglion cyst, and a stress reaction.
First off, the crushed foot was very interesting because the patient’s foot got completely crushed in a work accident and it was so bad that his skin surrounding the area blistered and scabbed over. Because of this, Dr. Logel could not perform surgery on his as the incisions would have to be over the blisters, which would cause infections. This left the patient to have to be fine with having his body heal his crushed bones by itself. Today when I saw him, he was just about to move out of his boot and after seeing his x-rays, it was crazy to see how the body is able to function, although parts of it is broken. He was nowhere near healed completely, but his body was able to build enough bone callus around the broken bones that he could put weight on it.
The next patient that I found very interesting was a patient who had had a huge ganglion cyst on the posterior side of his foot for years. A ganglion cyst is a noncancerous lump on the ankle or wrist that is filled with jellylike fluid and usually is caused by an injury to a tendon or joint. I wasn’t able to see his cyst in person, but based on the x-ray and CT scan, you could tell that his cyst was around 2-2.5 inches big. When I saw him today, he had just gotten his cast off from surgery and it was cool to hear Dr. Logel explain what he did in surgery; he removed the cyst, but since the skin was so stretched out, he had to take out wedges of the skin, so it would lay flat again. This was a really cool case as I have never seen anything like it; however, it did remind me how gross the feet and casts can be as it smelled very unpleasant in the room.
Lastly, one of the other cases that I enjoyed to see was not a very rare case like the others, but it was a patient that was very similar to me. This patient was very active everyday and was still exercising and dancing, even though her foot had been hurting her. This was also an interesting case because the x-rays didn’t show any complete breaks, but all of her symptoms lined up to be a stress reaction. This is basically the intermediate stage between a healthy bone and a stress fracture, where you can’t see the break on an x-ray because it is so faint, but it is making it’s way through the bone. Dr. Logel ended up giving her a boot to where at all times to be cautious of a stress fracture. She was pretty reluctant to wearing the boot all day and not being able to exercise which would be pretty similar to how I would react if I was in her situation. However, this case showed me that if I ever get injured, I need to follow what the doctor says or else I am going to end up needing surgery or something worse.
Overall, it was a very busy and fun day and I’m excited to see some more surgery tomorrow!
