Re: I offered to resign today

Logan Shaw <lshaw-usenet@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Roger Burton West wrote:
I knew a medic who used a surgical monkey-wrench. (Taking bolts out of
people's backs - very few surgeons bother to record what sort of
fastening they used, and boiling up the wrench was easier than boiling
up an array of Allen keys and screwdrivers and spanners. Didn't do the
wrench much good, though.)

Plus I imagine it would be a tad bit of a bummer to get into surgery and
then realize the previous surgery had been done overseas and the patient
was metric when you expected that you had an imperial patient, or vice
versa.

I recently won the Titanium Lottery, and inquired of the surgeon as to
what kind of fasteners he had installed. He thought a moment and replied
that they were Allen-head (internal hex) screws. I didn't know if they
were SAE or metric until a little later, when I was investigating the
hospital bill. There was a line item with a rather impressive figure
listed next to it, with a description that sounded like someone's name.
Googling that text showed that it was the name of the company that made
the implant, and lead me to a handy-dandy PDF catalog. [0]

Up to that point, I hadn't thought about the plate installation very much.
I was pretty sure they used something like wood screws instead of drilling
through and using machine bolts and nuts. In passing I figured they
probably drilled pilot holes for the wood-screw-like fasteners. I
started reading the catalog - screws, screwdrivers, drill bits, drills -
about what I expected. I found that the fasteners were metric - in
millimeters, the dimensions were round numbers. Hey, you can even get
washers for some of the big screws, good to know. Then I looked a little
closer at the tooling list...

Tap, 1.5 mm Tap, 2.0 mm Tap, 2.7 mm [...] Tap, 6.5 mm

Holy fscking ***.

That simultaneously amazes me, fascinates me, and gives me the screaming
heebie-jeebies.

At least they don't list any Helicoils in the catalog. [1]

Matt Roberds

[0] uggc://begub.fzvgu-arcurj.pbz/hf/tvirsvyr.nfc?vq=140&o=2-71180472.cqs
(linked from uggc://begub.fzvgu-arcurj.pbz/hf/Fgnaqneq.nfc?AbqrVq=2959 )

[1] Upon further reflection, I realized that the whole thing - plate,
screws, tools, everything - probably came in a kit, and that most of
the tools got used once and thrown away. I don't really want to win
that lottery again, but if I do, I'm asking the doctor to save the
tooling.
.

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