Blog — Notes of a Plastic Surgeon

Welcome to my blog. I am a plastic surgeon in Seattle and have been in private practice since 1991. I've seen more than a few interesting faces and cases through my years spent in the exam room, the operating room and the emergency room. And I have an opinion on just about everything relating to plastic surgery (and a lot of unrelated stuff). If you like my blog, let me know. Thanks for reading! Lisa

Category: Emergency

Lawn mower safety – a mother’s nagging

July 22nd, 2011 — 7:33pm

Can you name the rules for lawn mower safety?

Seattle Plastic Surgeon and mother of three, Dr. Lisa Lynn Sowder nags her children and you about lawn mower safety.

It is such a wonderful thing to get some yard work out of my offspring now that they are old enough to mow, rake, sweep, weed, water, trim, edge, poop scoop, etc. As much as I love the smell of newly mown grass and the thought of them working (instead of me), I worry. I worry about the lawn mower thus the little nag session each and every time one of my boys has been nagged into mowing the lawn. Please take this little test to make sure you or your offspring are being smart with this most dangerous of yard care gizmos.

And I will add a couple of my own to the list:

Only children over 13 should mow a lawn.
Ear plugs okay but not no ipodlistening. They need to hear you yell, “Watch out for the dog!”
No mowing until the offspring has cooled down from his/her rage at having to actually perform agreed upon chores for agreed upon bennies. Rage and lawn mowers should never coexist.
No using the lawn mover for anything other than mowing the lawn. This calls for a cautionary (and I swear to God true) tale. Two patients in the same day present with nearly identical lawn mower injuries sustained while attempting to trim a hedge with a lawn mower. Patient #2 happen to see patient #1 (prior to his mishap) trimming his hedge with the lawn mower while Patient #2 was driving to get gas for his lawn mower and thought “Hey, what a great idea.” Not.

Stay tuned. One of these blogs I will tell you about my dad’s snowblower injury.

Thanks for reading. Dr. Lisa Lynn Sowder

Emergency, lawn mower injuries, Plastic surgery, Seattle plastic surgery, Trauma

Plastic Surgeons in the Emergency Room?

June 1st, 2011 — 11:42pm

Plastic Surgeons in the Emergency Rooom?

Last month I attended the annual meeting of the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery in Boston. I was lucky to attend a special presentation by Dr. Ross Bunch of Tuscaloosa, Alabama on the emergency medical response to the carnage left by the EF-5 tornado of April 27th. Dr. Bunch was finishing up a breast reconstruction (his fifth case of the day) at about 5:00 pm when the lights went out and the windows in the hospital recovery room exploded. He went from the operating room straight to the emergency room where, over the next 12 hours he treated 30 patients,one carried in on a door or one pushed in on rolling office chair. His most dramatic case was that of an elderly man whose face was alvulsed and hanging by a lateral flap of skin and fat. Dr. Bunch reattached his face in the hallway with the aid of emergency lighting.

A total of 800 emergecy cases were treated by the various doctors who reported for emergency duty.

The following week, Dr. Bunch provided post op care for his patients and many others who had delayed healing and/or infections of their wounds given the high level of complexity of the injuries. (Tornados do not use sterile technique). His presentation made me proud of my profession and the things we do under the most dire of circumstances.

I am on Emergency Room call tonight and my guess is, if I get called, it won’t be anything more exciting than a dog bite requiring a few dozen stitches but who knows? Maybe the Big One (in Seattle that would be an earthquake) will hit and I’ll go into disaster mode like Dr. Bunch did.

Emergency, Plastic surgery, Seattle plastic surgery, Trauma

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