"Do you want the good news or the bad news first?"

"The good news"

"We're going to name the disease after you"

One time I was in the ER, and a doctor noted that my heart beat has a rather pronounced split s2 rythm which is something that doctors need to learn to discern when listening to a heartbeat, so for the next hour as I was waiting around, I had several other younger physicians stop by and say "hey I was told to come listen to your heartbeat."

Made me feel a little special in a very peculiar way I haven't known since.

All that hardware tells us otherwise.

Can't have shit in Detroit

I got into a car crash and went to the ER to get an X-ray done to make sure nothing was off, not this was a week after the crash. Anyways hurt like a bitch and after awhile of waiting the X-ray gets done and the tech just kinda looks at it for a minute, turns to me and says "Two bits of good news, your knee is just inflamed and swollen no breaks, also Ive been doing this for awhile and your bone density is absurd" which is how I found out that I'm a freak of nature who has borderline unbreakable bones. Explains why I struggle to swim in fresh water so much.

It's always a great feeling when a doctor looks at something from you and then calls their colleagues to look as well..

They didn‘t put everything back after the operation. That’s how I end up with random screws after any repair I do.

Um... so looking at the tibia, that is 100% an intramedullary tibial nail:

...which means their tibia was broken as fuck, and there's a pretty hefty chance the fibula was also broken as fuck in that same injury.

My guess is the missing segment was fragmented to the point of not being saveable, and removed during the same operation the IM nail was placed.

That doesn't necessarily mean the OP is bullshit - maybe they had some new resident docs, or nurses, or techs or w/e who hadn't seen that before and it was a genuine wtf moment for them. I love it when new staff get that look!

The defibrillator strikes again!

Full disclosure: I am not a doctor.

It probably was not recoverable when they repaired whatever made that Titanium splint and screws neccesary.

Edit: apparently the middle portion of the fibula is so non-essential for weight-bearing that it is the most common bone harvested for bone grafts elsewhere in the body

When you put something back together and end up with spare parts.

Looks like major leg construction, someone removed it and forgot to put it back in

Tibia surgery affected chronic blood loss to areas of the fibula and thus osteonecrosis of the affected bone. This patient probably has some serious health issues outside their bone health for this to happen.

And even weirder, someone put all these titanium pins in my tibia!

I hope you got titanium. It's bio compatible with bone and will fuse together. Took about ten years for me. I was told it's not important to have a fibula but I think mine probably merged back together since it doesn't feel like razor blades in my leg.