Her legs dangled over the edge of the paper-covered vinyl, revealing a right knee that protruded about an inch farther than the left. She's my dancer. In fact, her pediatrician had bypassed the formality of an orthopedic consult and brought the X-rays straight to my office door.
Orthopedic surgery is rooted in a long tradition of preventing deformity in children.
A crooked tree braced to a post is the emblem of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons. As the twig is bent, so grows the tree. I skimmed the meager entries in Gabrielle's chart, trying to figure out how the asymmetry of her legs had been missed for so long. I asked the mother, slipping an X-ray onto the light box. My sister noticed while watching a videotape we made at a birthday party last week.