Good to know this kind of weirdness doesn’t just happen in vet clinics. The worst part is that I think they were listening to Darude. On purpose!
Reminds me of getting my wisdom teeth out. Halfway through I was roused from the general anesthetic just enough to see the doc apparently standing on the edges of the chair - literally crouching over me - sweat beading his brow, grunting mightily as he squeezed (something) with both hands, then a mighty cracking sound and I slipped back under. He did acknowledge afterward that it “took some effort” breaking them loose. Lol!
That was freaking horrifying! I mean, yeah, a doc’s gotta do what’s necessary, but DANG.
I bet that leaves fewer bruises than my 3-foot-crowbar method!
I’d rather not endure any procedure that entails the use of a hammer.
Hoooooly crap. This is amazing. Pulling is one thing, but literally hammering? Wow.
I was thinking of the medulla in your brain, and this seemed like a really crazy and dangerous way to remove a nail embedded in someone’s skull. It turns out that an intramedullary nail is a titanium rod jammed into the medullary cavity, or marrow cavity, of a broken arm or leg bone, to help stabilize it so it heals more quickly.
I can’t imagine how sore that leg is gonna be during recovery.
I puked in my mouth on that one…
Oh the humanity!
From what the doc told me, that was pretty much what he had to do to remove a tibial rod so that he could replace one of my knees. Said it was the hardest part of the whole procedure.
Nobody to blame but himself, though – he’d put the rod there three years earlier.
well for once I’m not happy about the animated gif of the money shot
My ex and best friend went to UC Davis med school and according to them ortho culture is very macho driven. Like a bunch of rugby types.
There’s a reason Ortho surgeons are sometimes referred as “carpenter/mechanics”
I mean, look at the kit for this joint system:
That is brutal, and medieval.
It looks like most of the force is being absorbed by the hip joint… Someone couldn’t come up with something with a little more finesse, like a slide hammer, or bearing puller type mechanism?
I imagine one day such work will be roboticized, but yeah, that day is apparently very far away. May all of our knees last until then!
The installation instructions remind me of Ikea instructions:
I was thinking, why not some kind of hydraulic winch with a big soft brace to hold the leg against and spread out the force while it slowly and inexorably applies hundreds of pounds of pulling force to wrench the damn pin out of the leg? It couldn’t possibly be worse than spanning the gap and hammering on the pin…
Definitely a measure twice, cut once proposition.
At what point exactly would one say, “I don’t think the problem is that we’re still not hitting it hard enough!” ?
Or is there no such point? 
