The Appointment with the Doctor

Within a minute they heard the Sandy and the doctor having a discussion in the hall. Their voices receded and a few minutes later he came in. He had her records in his hand with the x-rays on top of them. “I got a chance to look at these. The ones they took at the hospital were not as clear as we need.”

Laura spoke up, “But the doctor there used them to set my leg and verify that it was done right. Are you going to have to do that again or maybe break my leg and reset it?”

“Whoa, young lady, where did you get that idea?”

“Well, you wanted to see me quickly and I thought there must be something wrong.”

“First, the reduction of the fracture was good, in fact it is nearly as perfect as if I did it.” He grinned. “We all think we’re the best. It’s too early to see on an x-ray if the bone is healing but there is no reason to believe it will not.”

Before he could get his breath she broke in, “Then why did you want to see me so soon?”

“When the x-rays of your leg were sent here Sandy took a look at them. This is routine here to have someone look at them when they arrive. Usually all she or the other tech does when an x-ray comes in is see that they are the right x-rays, is it of a leg not an arm, the bones are the right age and any injury matches. But she has been taking courses on reading x-rays and likes to see if she can learn more by seeing more x-rays or find something that was missed. So when she was looking at your x-rays she noticed a small shadow just above the fracture on the distal femur.”

“Where is it?”

He pointed to her leg. “The fracture is about here and the spot on the distal femur here.” He pointed to places on her cast.

“What are these shadows as you call them?”

“That is why we had you come in. The x-rays taken at the hospital were not the best. They were fine for diagnosing and reducing a fracture, but they don’t show enough detail for us to see what is there. The spots were small and faint enough to be flaws in the x-ray.”