#Vertebral Fracture

[gauricmi]

The Global Spinal Imaging Market is Anticipated to Witness High Growth Owing to Rising Incidence of Spinal Disorders

The global spinal imaging market encompasses imaging modalities and procedures used for evaluating spinal disorders and spine-related conditions. Key modalities include X-ray, CT myelography, MRI, nuclear imaging, and ultrasound. Spinal imaging provides detailed anatomical information and helps diagnose spinal disorders effectively. It plays a vital role in evaluating degenerative conditions, infections, masses, fractures, structural deformities, and post-surgical assessment. The growing burden of spinal disorders due to lifestyle changes and rising geriatric population is a key factor fueling demand for spinal imaging procedures worldwide. The Global spinal imaging market is estimated to be valued at US$ 2.10 BN in 2024 and is expected to exhibit a CAGR of 5.4% over the forecast period 2024 To 2031. Key Takeaways Key players operating in the Global Spinal Imaging Market Growth are Shimadzu Corp., FUJIFILM, Hitachi, Ltd., Toshiba Medical Systems, Inc., GE Healthcare, Koninklijke Philips N.V., Siemens Healthineers, Canon Medical Systems Corp., Bruker, and Mediso Ltd. These players are focusing on new product launches and offering advanced imaging modalities to bolster their market position. Major companies are also expanding their geographical presence in emerging markets through partnerships and acquisitions. For instance, in 2021, FUJIFILM acquired Hitachi's diagnostic imaging business to strengthen its position in the medical system business globally. The key opportunities in the market include increasing adoption of hybrid imaging systems, growing demand for minimally invasive procedures, and integration of AI and analytics with spinal imaging modalities. Hybrid imaging systems combine anatomical and functional imaging which help provide better visualization during diagnosis and treatment planning. Moreover, there is high potential for spinal imaging in emerging regions such as Asia Pacific, Latin America, and Middle East & Africa. Factors such as increasing healthcare expenditure, growing awareness about advanced spine care, and initiatives by market players will aid the adoption of spinal imaging in these markets over the forecast period. Market Drivers Rising incidence of spinal disorders due to obesity, trauma, age, and lifestyle changes is a major market driver. Spinal disorders account for a significant proportion of global musculoskeletal disease burden. According to the WHO, around 20% of the world's population is affected by spinal disorders annually. Get More Insights On This Topic:  Spinal Imaging Market

[alinladaru]

Enlife Solutions, partner of the SRNIR conference and organizer of the Vertebroplasty Workshop with Tecres (Italy) and Dr. Bogdan Dorobăț (SUUB)

[reavesluv]

Between sessions

“You’ll come back. Stronger than ever.”

Paige torn her ACL during her junior year in Uconn. Rehab and therapy sessions were a must— You’ve been working in sports medicine for years, and you became her only hope.

· · ─────── ·𖥸· ─────── · ·

You always knew what you wanted. You were empathetic, kind, caring. You were made to work with people, to help people. You loved medicine, and also, sports.

You grew up in a household full of athletes, but your family was cursed, or at least that’s what you used to say. Your mom played soccer in her youth, until she dislocated her knee. Your dad played basketball– almost NBA level, until a vertebral fracture. And your big brother also played basketball, until on his freshman year of college, he suffered a severe shoulder dislocation with nerve damage.

When you turned ten, and told everyone you wanted to play a sport, they said “You’ll never play a sport under this roof.”

You knew why, so you never fought them.

But, if you couldn’t play, then what were you gonna do?

And that’s when it found you. An anatomy book that your mom kept hidden for some reason in her little library.

You fell in love with it. And with everything it said.

You learned how the muscles work, how the brain functions. And you understood that’s what you had to do.

You were always the type of girl who lived inside books. Studying until midnight by choice, always getting A+ in every class.

While you studied, you learned how you could have treated your family’s injuries. But you never told them, scared that still affects them.

You applied for pre-med classes before graduating high school. Doctors helped you sneak into the gallery of the OR’s.

You loved healthcare, but you loved sports more— that was your actual dream.

You discovered sports medicine and applied to all the Ivy league programs in America, and also universities close to your home.

When you finished high school, it was time to make college decisions.

Yale, Berkeley, Harvard, Stanford, NYU, UCLA.

You were good. More than good.

You chose Berkeley, you were the best in your classes at just eighteen.

When you turned twenty-two you graduated and started doing rounds in hospitals. Easily found a job in private clinics.

You specialized in knee and shoulder dislocations and vertebral fractures— sounds familiar, right?

You entered the transfer portals, you loved California, but you needed to help players from other places.

You got transferred to Uconn. They needed a sports therapist for their men and women’s basketball team. You chose the women’s team and recommended other people for the male’s.

The women’s team was different. They were good, and they liked you.

You used to give them talks about the importance of taking care of your body. Always trying to have the best equipment to take care of them.

Some of them with chronic injuries, mostly ankles and wrists. Others with really recent dislocations or lactic acid buildups.

But you never really had to take care of a serious injury until—

Paige Bueckers. twenty-one. The star of the team.

You were there the moment her ACL torn. The way she felt to the ground grabbing her knee, tears coming out from her eyes, screams coming out of her mouth.

You ran to her, trying to calm her down while the rest of the team grabbed the emergency stretcher.

“You’re gonna be okay. I promise.” You told her.

She cried harder. Didn’t even look at you.

They took her to the therapy room and put her down.

You tried to grab her knee softly so you could diagnose her.

“Don’t touch me.” She cried out.

“You want me to help you or you want to die in pain? You answered.

She understood you just wanted to help her, and let her guard down.

“It hurts Y/N, it hurts.” She cried, she grabbed your arm that was closest to her.

“I know Paige, i know.”

Everything happened so fast. You gave her a pill to calm her down and inject her a pain killer directly to her knee. A scream of pain came out of her.

When she calmed down, you started to do your diagnosis, hoping it wasn’t as bad as it looked.

Her parents and some of her teammates were already in the room, waiting for your final say.

You took her parents outside. “She torn her ACL.”

Her mom cried.

Drew looked at his dad in confusion. “What’s that?” He asked.

“It means she’s out for the rest of the season.” His dad finished.

“She’s not strong enough to hear it right now. She hopes that is just a minor dislocation.” You told him.

“She knows a minor dislocation doesn’t hurt like that. She knows.” He answered.

You looked down. You were so empathetic sometimes it was embarrassing.

You both entered the room. Paige still laying on the bed, waiting for you.

She looked at you and her eyes shined. She was definitely not the nonchalant final boss she used to say she was.

“Hey Paige, how are you feeling?” You asked.

You helped her sit on the bed so she could speak more comfortably. Then looked at you.

“Really bad.” You could sense how she wanted to cry again, you could sense the pain in her voice. “What’s wrong with me?”

“Paige—” You took a deep breath. “You torn your ACL.”

Her eyes widened and tears came out almost immediately from her eyes.

Her dad hugged her. Drew hugging her other leg softly.

“You’re out for the rest of the season.” You finished.

She cried so hard you never heard someone cry that much before.

She wiped her tears and looked at you. “Please tell me you’re joking.”

“I wish.”

She tried to compose herself. And looked at you again.

“Is as much rehab as i think i have to get?” She asked softly.

“I think even more.” You answered the same way. She lowered her head, like she was grieving someone. “I’ll take care of you, Bueckers.”

She looked at you. “You’ll come back stronger, i’ll make sure of that.” You finish.

“Thank you.” She said, before crying again.

· · ─────── ·𖥸· ─────── · ·

[fandom-lover2]

Dirty Mirror

Chapter Two - Holding Tight

Word Count - 2363

-image not mine-

Chapter One - Lost and Found

Chapter Three - Shot of Clarity

Optimus sat in the hospital room, foot bouncing nervously as he waited for news on your condition from June and the doctor.

 Ratchet was pacing the room before him, practically pulling his synthetic hair out.

June had brought you here at sunset. It was now morning. Had you been in surgery this whole time? Were you still alive?

No, he couldn’t think like that.

You were alive, because you were strong. You needed to be strong, for him. He needed you to be alive.

 Another earthly hour passed before the Nurse finally emerged from within the hospital to update the bots in the waiting room. June made her way to the men, both standing and taking long strides to meet her in the center of the room.

“Well?” Ratchet asked.

“She’s… stable.” June took a moment to collect herself, tears gathering in her eyes. “The damage she sustained is server. Three broken ribs, bruised lungs, shattered collar bone and fractures in multiple parts on her arms and legs. Almost as if she was crushed by a giant hand.”

The nurse looked at Optimus with an underlying rage for a moment before continuing.

“She’s got a gash on her forehead but a few stitches handled that. The biggest concern is the large fracture at the base of her skull. It is close to her vertebral column. It’s honestly a miracle she isn’t permanently paralyzed.” The nurse wiped the tears from her cheeks, taking a deep breath. “I don’t even understand how she managed to get off that table, let alone move.”

The nurse looked back at the Prime and this time didn’t bother to cover the accusation in her glare. “Why was she scared of you?” June asked, crossing her arms and looking at the Prime expectantly.

 Optimus ducked his head. That was the same question that had been on his processor since he left base.

“I do not know.” he managed out softly, spark heavy.

“Can we see her?” Ratchet asked, interrupting the tension and guilt.

“She’s sleeping now. The anesthetic from the surgery is still in her system and the doctors are thinking of inducing a medical coma to help her heal. I think it would be best if you both left.”

Optimus closed his eyes. He’d failed, as a guardian and an Autobot, and now the person he cared most about was suffering. And he couldn’t even be there to help you.

 “I’ll send updates to Jack and he can pass them along.” The nurse continued.

Then, with a final hateful glance at the Prime, she turned and headed back into the hospital.

Optimus was vaguely aware of Ratchet leading him back toward his alt mode and assumed he drove back to base because the next thing he remembered was sitting on his berth, feeling cold. Finally in the confines of his berthroom, away from prying eyes, he let his guard drop and freely expressed all the emotions he’d tried to keep locked away.

-------

For the next nine days, the base was silent. No chattering kids or music being played from phones and tv blasting the latest show you kids had become obsessed with.

Ratchet tried to distract himself with work, focusing on trying to track down M.E.C.H and make them answer for the pain they had caused the team.

The rest continued with daily patrols and scouting missions, but those no longer felt important.

The remaining children didn’t talk. They just sat on the catwalk, trying to make it seem like they were doing something. Raf spent a lot of time on his computer, also hoping to find the militia group.

Optimus… changed. He wouldn’t leave his berth, not even for Energon. He just stayed hidden in that dark room, frozen.

He’d seen you go through a few of these before. You’d called them ‘depressive episodes’ and while he’d had a few himself, he never understood how yours went on for so long. Yes, he had supported you, but he never understood when you said that it felt like it would never end.

Now he understood. He understood how it felt like to have everything and nothing flowing through his processor faster than he could comprehend, yet having no will to try make sense of the chaotic noise. And for the first time since he met you, he really understood what it meant to see no hope.

How it felt to feel no hunger, no desire to move, tired but not able to rest. He felt nothing but pain, and fear and empty.

The worst part of it all, of all the quiet, was that only one thought seemed prominent in everyone’s minds: Why was the one you had always felt the safest around now the object of your fear?

-------

On the morning of the tenth day of your medical coma, June Darby phoned the base.

Over the course of the past week and a bit, Jack had been the liaison of your condition but he was at school today.

Was the news that urgent that she needed to tell them immediately? The old medic prepared himself for the worst as he opened the comm. “Nurse Darby?”

“She’s awake.”

And then, the called ended.

The only time Ratchet had ever moved so fast on Earth was when he has using the synthetic Energon. Bolting down the halls, he didn’t even bother to knock before slamming Optimus’ door open.

The Prime was sat at the edge of his bed, looking down at his servos with an unreadable expression as silent tears leaked from his optics.

Optimus lifted his helm, and Ratchet’s presence was all the words he needed. Hot on Ratchet’s trail, the older bots transformed and raced out of the base toward Jasper.

June met them at the doors to the hospital, a weak smile on her tired face.

“Tell us everything.” Ratchet requested, eager to get inside and be with you.

“She woke up about an hour ago. She’s obviously in a lot of pain but we’ve given her some morphine to combat that.” The nurse’s face then fell. “She’s still really scared, and won’t talk to anyone about what happened.”

That was not what they were hoping to hear. But you were awake, and that in of itself was something to be grateful for.

“Can we see her?” Optimus asked softly, voice so weak he surprised himself.

The nurse grimaced. “Right now she needs a calm environment so she can heal. Seeing you might trigger her again.”

Optimus’ spark clenched and he dropped his head.

“But Optimus can stand outside while I talk.” Ratchet spoke, starting to make his way into the hospital.

June just sighed in reply, following the bot inside while Optimus trailed behind.

“She’ll need to stay here for a few more days. And once she can leave, she won’t be able to do much alone.”

“Yes well, once she’s back at base there will be plenty of people to help her.”

June stopped outside a room and turned to the mechs. “Are you sure she’ll want to go back?”

Both bots dropped their gazes. The thought had crossed their minds that you might never want to have contact with the team again after what happened to you. They prayed you would come home.

June knocked on the door softly and opened it. The sound of steady beeps that kept track of your heartbeat soothed Optimus’ racing spark just a fraction.

“I’ve got a visitor for you.” June explained, gesturing for Ratchet to follow her inside.

As soon as he came into your view, the beeps picked up speed and Optimus heard the rustle of your sheets. “No, please. He can’t be here.” you tried to scramble back, having no regard for the pain.

It took all of Optimus’ willpower not to charge into your room.

You were so scared, and it broke his spark that he couldn’t comfort you, because for some reason he seemed to be the cause of your pain.

“Optimus isn’t here.” Ratchet lied.

That stopped your movements but the steady rhythm was still off beat.

“I wanted to come see how you were doing.” Ratchet explained in a calm voice, and Optimus heard his friend sit on the chair no doubt placed at the side of your bed.

“Fine.” you mumbled, offering no more.

It was silent for a long while, and Optimus had to clench his fists and bite the inside of his cheek as a way to fight the urge to burst into the room.

“You wanna know what happened.” Your voice was rough, yet breathy at the same time.

Optimus recognized it immediately, this was your ‘holding back tears’ voice.

“Only if you are ready.” June answered.

 It was silent a moment more before you took a deep breath and began. “I was in the hanger, and Silas was there. He asked where the base was. I refused to tell him and then he left. It took a while but then… Optimus came.” Your voice broke. “I tried talking to him but… he wouldn’t listen. He just kept coming closer.” A sob left you and the Prime felt his spark fluctuate. “He-he grabbed me and began squeezing, hard. I begged him to stop but he wouldn’t. Then, he threw me at the wall.” You sniffed then, a few unsteady breaths leaving you as you tried to hold yourself together.

“And you’re certain it was Optimus?” Ratchet asked, as confused as the bot in question was.

Optimus had been in the base, anxiously waiting for any information regarding where you were. He had an entire base full of witnesses. So how had ‘he’ attacked you?

Oh Primus.

Just thinking of hurting you made his frame shudder. But then, the fury settled in.

Someone, no, humans who looked like him had attacked you, taking away the sense of comfort and safety he had always given you and twisted it into fear. The energon boiled in his frame as he thought of all the ways he could make those humans pay.

“He looked kinda dirty. And his optics were yellow. But it was him. His frame, his servo, his voice.”

Your words faded away as quiet sobs overtook your body. But that little bit of information was all they needed to understand. Silas had used Nemesis Prime to attack you.

You’d never actually seen the human remake of Optimus so you wouldn’t have entirely know what was happening at that moment when fear filled your body. That didn’t mean your guardian would be able to forget those terrified eyes that stared back at him as you tried desperately to get away from your enemy.

“I don’t think I’ll ever be able to look at Optimus again.”

-------

After your… spark-wrenching statement Optimus had gone to the waiting room, trying to drown the world out. He knew Ratchet would be explaining to you about Nemesis, but that wouldn’t change the fact that it was his faceplates you saw when the bot was killing you.

While Optimus waited, he thought back to all the memories he had of you and him. Times when you would lie beside him on a hill somewhere and stargaze, or when you played songs from your phone during outings. His favorite memories were by far when you would teach him of Earth and its people.

It was at those times he didn’t need to be a Prime, because you only saw him as Optimus. He could openly express his emotions and unload the weight he carried. You’d listen without hesitation, keeping your focus solely on him. Those moments would be the ones he missed the most, getting to be himself. But if only being the leader was what you needed, then that is who he’d be.

Ratchet came staggering into the waiting room a long while later, looking lost. He sat down heavily beside the Prime. Neither spoke, not for a long time.

“She’s knows of Nemesis.” Ratchet broke the silence after the weight of it became unbearable. “She understands now that it wasn’t you.”

“I still won’t be going to her.” Optimus voiced his decision.

Ratchet turned to his leader in surprise, but kept his mouth shut. He knew there was no way to convince Optimus otherwise.

“She’s resting now if you want to see her.” The medic said softly, standing. “I’m heading back to base to let the others know of her condition.”

The Prime nodded, watching his friend walk out the hospital and toward his alt mode. Once Ratchet’s ambulance was out of sight, he stood and began making his way to your room.

Optimus opened the door as quietly as possible and slipped in, gasping at what he saw.

It would be quicker to name the body parts unbandaged than those covered in the white cloth. A small tube was connected to your nose, no doubt giving you additional oxygen. The beeping on the machines was once again steady and your breathing was how it usually sounded when you slept. An IV was connected to your arm, giving you a clear liquid.

What Optimus wasn’t prepared for however, was how weak the whiteness of the room made you look. Even with your head turned away from him, he could see how sunken your cheeks were and the dark circles under your eyes, despite the fact that you had been sleeping for over a week.

Looking down at you now, for the first time ever, he saw you as fragile. He didn’t see the strong being who he himself looked up to, but saw the young girl he’d allowed to be hurt because of his inability to protect those he cared for. He didn’t see the human who carried burdens as if they were feathers and smiled in face of danger.

What you had said was for the best. Not being around Optimus would keep you safe. And no matter how much it hurt him, he needed to let you go.

Reaching out a shaking hand, he made a reach to take your own smaller one but stopped. Retracting his hand, he turned and moved back toward the door.

“Goodbye, Little One.”

Tags: @ameryhn

[sun-snatcher]

( credits to @winterswake for this phenomenal gifset ! )

3/? | SEAWARDS, TO YOU. ; REPENTANT!AU

summ.  A continuation. Sauron learns what it means to be human— and what it takes to be one. or: Sauron experiences the best & worst of mortality. pairing.  (Repentant!Mairon/Sauron) Halbrand / f!reader , ( established in #SEAWARDSTOYOU ) w.count.  4k a/n.  Important tags in first chapter ! Warnings for implications to PTSD & slight horror , including Non-graphically implied Animal Death.

THE BARNACLES STARE.

They’re overgrown; marrow-white and clinging onto the cracks of the salt-licked rockface, breathing and blinking at him like the thousand, ever-watchful eyes of the Ainur. 

In his dreams, every single one turns to blazing stars that wink out in an instant as he passes them. The shadow of Morgoth is a powerful darkness: it can dim them into lightlessness and nothingness. He tells them he is neither Morgoth nor Melkor nor Sauron nor Mairon, that he is something new; something different— but they can’t hear him under the sheet of waves crashing like a tempest on the shores, pulling him down, down, down, and under.

(He drowns. Rarely does he choose to fight the currents.)

In other vivid dreams, the barnacles don’t listen. They don’t because they can’t listen; because they’re dead and lifeless and the colour of their shells look eerily vertebral and bone-faced. They’re skulls, he later realises. A thousand of them. Endless. Both young and old. Their missing teeth and gaping maws, frozen in terror, roll in masses that wash in from the bloody tides and take up the shore beneath his feet. They fracture and splinter and cry out in pain when he walks on where soft sands ought to be, begging for mercy with every black step he takes.

He wakes up restless. He wakes up mortified. 

A forest fire rips through Eldalondë.

It dies out as quick as it had come, however; by the grace of the Valar and their blessed storms! The Faithful cry.

“Blessed,” Galadriel hears Halbrand scoff underneath his breath. They’d both sailed down the river Nunduinë with the other locals to help with clearing out whatever the blaze had left in its wake, and the very air now is clogged with residual smoke and the stench of death. She doesn’t comment on his muttering. (He had yet to heal completely from the rope burns in his palms from when they’d been stranded at sea, after all.) 

“You think it’s a sign?” asks one of the arborists. 

A grave weight seemed to have sunken into Galadriel when the scent of the Mellyrn had greeted her, and she’d been brought to the heart of the massive grove, where she lay a hand on the now-sundered tree.

“These very trees were brought as seeds from Aman by the Eldar of Tol Erresëa. Elros Tar-Minyatur himself had hand in planting these.” She remembers Elrond, too, had come to sail and plant a tree of his own here. The forest had been so young then, in the early years of the Second Age. Now the woods seem unsettled— even the very winds that blow between its spaces.

“Not idly do the trees of Valinor burn,” she finally warns. “Even when ensnared by lightning.”

Halbrand had seen it from afar, coming downwind from the riverbank: the tree’s colossal trunk— thick as a Dwarven-hewn mountain pillar— torn in its center from the high canopies of branches, snaking all the way down to the spindly stretch of roots. The bolt of light had rent an ugly, gaping wound into its silver bole, hollowing out the wood and carving it out to look like a glaring crack into the Unseen World.

He can still see the gleam of red embers between the bark of the tunnelled tree.

He can still hear it crackling in its seams, even.

Or… no. That isn’t the fire— 

“Galadriel!”

Mallorn branches grow great and wide, so it takes out an entire stable when it crashes down. 

One of the horses get caught underneath. 

They cannot move the branch. (It wouldn’t do any good, even if they did.)

Abârzî, the sea-cadet weeps, stroking the mare before he went to braid the hairs of her tail and cut it off. He chants it like a prayer.

Abârzî. Abârzî. Abârzî.

(No one has the heart to finish the job.

Halbrand does not exactly offer— but they don’t stop him either when he begrudgingly enters the stables for them.)

“What was he saying?” Sauron asks, after, in some poorly attempt to clear his mind.

“Her name,” Galadriel translates, solemn. “Abâr holds several meanings. It stands for strength, might, endurance. ‘One of Valiance’, even. Perhaps: ‘Admirable one’—”

It’s the first time Mairon ever experiences throwing up.

Galadriel sits beside him, and doesn’t say a word more.

He’s glad. 

Or, maybe he isn’t.

He doesn’t understand what he feels these days.

The wine Sauron pours to the raven-haired elf in his dreams is thick.

Too thick to be wine— but just as deceptively sweet.

On other nights, he pours and it keeps going, and going, and going. It gushes down his palms and down the nameless peak he’s standing in, and cascades down the cliff- like a thundering waterfall— no, an open wound. Sometimes the elf pushes him forward from the back, and it stings like a stabbing betrayal. (Other times, Mairon simply chooses to fall.)

When he plummets, it’s into red seas. It feels like wading through molasses; exhausting a pain into his limbs more than the dull ache at his nape and the throb of his suffocating lungs. Then there’s the twinkle of starlight throwing him off every time he swims. He always mistakes them for the night sky, and he blindly reaches towards the surface— until they turn out to be the white-faces of barnacles instead, attached to the maws of a sea-wyrm deep in the ocean.

Tonight, however, he swims in the right direction. 

The raven-haired elf pulls him out with a trusting, helping hand wrapped in a gauntlet; and when Sauron breaches ashore, he’s not kneeling at his feet on sands or bones, but instead on the all-too familiar cracked, black stones of his old fortress up in the bleak frigidness of Forodwaith.

Mairon is garbed in soaking red robes.

This time, Adar coronates Sauron not with Morgoth’s crown, but with a rotting horse skull named Abârz—

“You have a strange shadow, ‘Maril,” Eärien tells you, not long after you’d come down to Nísimaldar to assist in the clean-up effort. “It’s shaped like… a funny-looking man who always seems to look as if he’s rolled around in the dirt for ten hours.”

You blink, puzzled, then turn to where she’s peering over your shoulder.

Halbrand’s eyes dart away just as you meet his gaze. 

“Friend,” you correct, levelling an unimpressed glare back at your table of teasing looks. “Halbrand is a friend.”

Isildur raises his brows once you begin gathering another fresh bowl of seafood. “Don’t forget the oysters. I hear they’re great for men’s libid—”

“Shut your mouth when you eat,” comes your sharp flick at his ear, going to leave as the rest of the cadets break into laughter. “Even Berek has better manners than you, airhead.”

Halbrand, shaded under a temporary forge set up by the treeline near the half-constructed stables, senses you long before he hears your voice. You’re appraising him again. He can feel it. It reminds him of the barnacles staring, and he has to actively remember not to be instinctively beset.

You’ve been kind, after all.

Frustratingly so. 

And Sauron, as uncertain as he has been of everything (and by everything, he means his entire simulacrum of an existence— or, reincarnation? Re-embodiment?) of late, is smart enough to know not to bite the hand that feeds him. You’d made it clear that night in the forge, after all, that you’re a friend. And if not that, then at the very least— an ally.

So it’s no surprise he sets the horseshoes he’s working on aside, and relents to your plate of food. It is a surprise, however, when a few minutes later you go:

“Thank you, by the way.”

He shuts your train of thought down before it can take off.

“Don’t start,” Sauron says, voice a low rasp. He knows where you’re going with this: You’ll thank Halbrand for going out of his way to help, for lending a hand with the rebuilding, for putting down a boy’s dying horse. He wants nothing to do with it. 

“Then I want to—”

“Don’t apologise either,” he interjects, failing to hold back the mild bite. (So much for biting the hand, huh?) 

Sauron had chosen, anyway, to take it upon himself to toil away in the forge, from sunrise to sundown; Dedicating himself to aiding the reconstruction by crafting everything from bridles, stirrups and bits, to metal brackets, hinges, and nails. He’d toiled because it focused him; because he’s utilitarian at heart and so despises uselessness; because it helps blur the waking haunts of horses and the seas under the hissing and clanging of working metal. 

(Besides, there’s plenty to improve in this part of the island, and Sauron is the type to not count flaws and cracks but to instead step up and fix them.)

So there’s no place for you to apologise. 

“You work quickly,” you redirect instead, avoiding the urge to bicker with him. “Some might say almost tirelessly. Seems you’re getting into our good graces, from what I hear.”

“Well, you ought to listen closer.” Local gossip is difficult to not earwig, especially if the topic is about a low-man from the South; even more so that they don’t expect said low-man to have a passable fluency in Adûnaic. 

You don’t bother to hide the amused look on your face. “Right. Well. They do say eavesdroppers never hear but ill of themselves. What have you gathered, jailbird?”

“That I would be their downfall,” he says, then after a mouthful, goes: “That I would squander their resources and drain their waters and steal their women,” which makes you laugh.

“Númenórean women are not so easily taken.”

He hums at that. “And are you?” 

“…Am I what?”

“Númenorean.”

You blink. Halbrand levels a gaze you suddenly can’t meet. It’s a game he plays, you guess right then, between the crawl of heat up your cheeks. Of sharpening ulterior meanings into both sides of his words like one would a sword’s edge. 

(“The low-man said that?” Isildur titters, much later. “What a smooth advance! I ought to give him a—”

“Beheading,” Eärien overrides, “You do know he also effectively implied your sister may be easy?”

Isildur cheers. “And he’s honest? Outstanding!”)

“I believe I am one, and that’s enough for me,” you lie. The thought has crossed your mind before— that you may very well be an orphan descendant of those who had sided with the Enemy, once upon a time. That it’s likely you’ll die long before your own foster family does. 

“And if you’re wrong?” asks Halbrand. He enjoys making you squirm. “Shall that be enough?”

“Then so be it,” you wrinkle your nose, displeased yet matter-of-fact. “It doesn’t matter what type of life we’ve been chanced to be given, jailbird, so long as we live it doing the right thing.”

Until it becomes part of your nature, Sauron abruptly remembers Diarmid; of his words; the necklace he’d cruelly taken from the old man that stormy night. The advice had been unwelcome then, and now it seems to haunt him still.

“Is that your heraldry?”

Halbrand loosens his grip. His hand has been flying to the pouch out of habit, lately. “No.” Then, after you scrutinise him, cocks his head and says, “Is it so hard to believe we might quite be the same— Lost and found at sea?”

“You have a past,” you point out, the same way Elendil had chivvied you then. (If you had noticed him blink away in a flinch, he’s grateful you don’t mention it.) “But no, not so hard to believe, considering that’s precisely how my father found you too. It’s just hard for me to believe someone would be so willing to sever ties with their history.”

“I found this on a dead man.”

“Then why keep it?”

“Thought it looked fancy,” he dodges.

“A pearl is fancy,” you reflect, unconsciously flexing your fingers. The ring he’d caught the first day you two met lustres now at certain angles of the setting sun, beyond the horses grazing lazily in half-barren pastures.

Your answer is hardly a surprise to him. A bereft orphan would likely covet something as insignificant as a worn-out emblem if it meant a potential link to their true heritage, no matter how thin or nonsensical. Yours just happens to be a pearl.

“Beauty is subjective, seabird,” he comments sagely, before letting curiosity get the better of him to ask, “Is that from the tidepool, too?”

No, you want to say. I like to think my mother gave it to me. “Yes. It was in my grasp when my father found me; so came my name.”

Halbrand finishes his bowl, and doesn’t say a word more.

You’re glad.

“You know, I meant to say earlier, before you interrupted me,” you begin out of the blue, voice possessing that Nienna-esque lilt that makes him unconsciously want to shrink into himself. “…You shouldn’t have had to be the one.” 

He follows your gaze to one of the Bay horses being herded away. Its body gleams; a vibrant, rich red-brown in the dusk that needles a strange grief into him. The colour reminds Mairon of his old form. 

“You’re right, I didn’t,” he agrees distastefully. Needless suffering also falls under the realm of uselessness, however. Perhaps, in a twisted, roundabout way, Sauron had chosen to put down Abârzî. “…But I’ve done far worse things.” 

You watch him tuck the necklace away beneath his collar, and he wonders, briefly, if you’d caught his shudder; his waver. 

“To survive,” you emphasise. Surely.

He laughs under his breath. It’s neither sad nor sordid, just empty. 

“Not all of it.”

Sauron opens his eyes to a crowned shadow and a blade.

Do not fear, it says. And when its hand had come away with a fistful of his long, braided hair, cut from his blazing red head— it repeats itself to him again, though this time in the commanding tongue of Black Speech.

Do not fret.

(He frets, and begs. He disobeys because he’s terrified— but it’s all happening under his skin. Black Speech cannot completely overpower the mind, you see, but it can command and seed an intent in it; a sliver of power over the flesh, if willed so. He can fret and beg all he likes; it will never translate to his body. 

Now he’s just a vessel, still as a Bay horse caught neath a great tree, watching and waiting; helpless and paralysed.)

He catches the glint of the dagger but he cannot scream.

Do not fret, Morgoth commands, in that divinely, beautiful way only a Valar can make all guttural words sound. Do not fret, Abârzî.

Mairon startles awake.

When the candlelight flickers with the moon, he mistakes them for blood on his hands and a stable floo—

“Y’alright, brother?” Someone claps him on the back.

It’s noon, now. It feels like he’s woken up for the third time today. 

The stables are coming up nicely (Quickly, because Halbrand works when everyone else is asleep). The clouds are thick, so the day isn’t beating down on the horses as they feed on bran and alfalfa, and there aren’t any damning signs of coming rain to hinder what little is left of the reconstruction today.

“Never better,” Halbrand says, after steadying his heavy breathing. The perfectly delivered lie is somehow miraculously seen through, however, and promptly called out, via: an insistent pint of ale into his calloused hands that’s supposedly the ‘cure to all ailments’. 

He learns the old drunkard’s name is Seamus.

He learns a bit of everything to nothing, really; until the sun had sunken too far beneath the canopies of the Mellyrn, and the dappled light faded into drifting spots, and all that was left of their drinks was a final sip. Sauron had found himself both inexplicably refreshed and exhausted between the overload that managed to distract him from the cavernous feeling in his chest.

“It’s a swallow bird. We sailors tattoo it as belief it’ll lead us back home when we get out at sea,” says the old man, between a tangent on island customs and traditions beyond the primly ‘Nobody kneels in Númenor’ ones. “Why? Lookin’ to get inked yourself?”

Halbrand blinks.

He had composed as Mairon among the other Ainur in the Timeless Halls for the Ainulindalë, once upon a time; and then served, much, much later, as Sauron alongside Morgoth in the Iron mountains of Thangorodrim. Neither exactly had been something anybody would call a home— One was simply a state of Being far beyond Eä, and the other had been both a fortress and a prison. 

“Don’t have a home to return to,” is all he decides.

It sounds a lot like a realisation.

“Aye, well…” The drunkard flails his hand to the chilly winds. “Swallows mate for life.”

Halbrand frowns in confusion. Seamus just laughs, mad.

He doesn’t understand what the crazy old shrimp had meant, until two days later (of which Sauron still had only understood half of what was told to him, if he’s being honest) when the stables had at last been completed and the locals put together a small feast for everyone who had come together to help.

Crab legs had been the catalyst, oddly enough. 

Or, rather, how you seemed to move amongst the people-who-may-not-be-your-people, and spoke to your family-who-isn’t-actually-your-family.

“Here,” you say, and idly lay skillfully de-shelled crab legs and a lobster tail on your bright-eyed sister’s plate. Then onto your even-more-bright-eyed brother’s plate, before doing the same to those within your reach at the table, including Halbrand— sitting adjacent and at a length, because nobody quite fancied sitting next to a brooding stranger.

“I can de-shell my crabs on my own,” he had wanted to huff, put out by the way he suddenly felt impeccably small by your limitless grace and social-butterfly-ness, but one of the cadets had beaten him to it.

Your answer is a smile that’d made Mairon think of Nienna again, followed by a winsome, “I know you can.”

He lingers on what you’d told him ere a week ago, at the forge when you’d come to him saying he looked most at home with a hammer and tongs in hand, and drafts in his head something he tells you much later, which is:

“You looked different around your not-people.”

You’re wrapped in a pelerine cloak that seems to do little with the cold Mallorn-fragrant winds, here at the Bay of Eldanna, where you’ve somehow convinced him to follow you down to at the crack of dawn. (It’s not like he could sleep through the night, anyway, now that the stables are complete and there’s nothing left to busy himself with for the time being.)

It’s early enough that the carpet of stars in the sky shines the rocky shoreline a blinding silver, and only the lantern-lit trawlers far out at sea are awake to fish for teeming shoals of shrimps in season beyond the reef. 

“My not-people?” you yawn, gathering up your cloak and shift dress to toe between the rocks. “Ah. I get it. Because I’m an outsider.”

He raises a tolerant eyebrow. “I’m the outsider, seabird.” To which you answer, breezily, as if it’s a simple equation: 

“Not to me. If it helps though, we can both be outsiders together.”

He barely has time to wrap his head around together when you begin skipping across the tidepools.

“I meant,” he trails after you, ungainly and tender-footed to the shallows compared to your well-versed steps. He had not been raised by the sea like you. “That you looked at home; with your people. And tha— Eärmaril, why did you bring me out here with a bucket?”

You peer at the crevices of the outcrops, turning over black slabs with a trained eye. “Have you ever had soft-shell crabs? They’re active around this time of night, so watch your step. If you’re not getting pinched by their claws, you’ll get stabbed by an urchin.”

“You loon!” he exclaims. “You brought me here for a hunting trip?”

“Hush, now! Or you’ll scare the fur seals further down the coast,” you hiss over your shoulder. “And no. I brought you here because I know you won’t be sleeping, anyway.”

The blatant accusation has him slipping from a jutting rock face.

You catch his hand to steady him.

(He’s warm. Some part of you wants to pull him close.)

“I overheard the farriers. They say the only reason the stables got put up that quickly is because you worked through the night.” You inform him as delicately as you can, because there’s a recognisable, vestigial haunt in his eyes you’ve seen in your father’s, under the shimmer of Eärendil’s starlight. “Is it nightmares, Halbrand?”

“See, Amm— Mother saved Isildur when he was a child.” Nobody in the family prefers to say drowned except your father, because the word is bitter to the taste. “I was there when it happened. Couldn’t sleep for weeks after. Do you dream of the waters too?”

The defensive frown he’d put up melts away, but you can see Halbrand steel himself, still, in order to answer.

“I dream of barnacles,” Sauron allows, brusque so as to cut the conversation short as he regains his footing.

You let go and narrow your eyes at him. 

After a long moment, you conclude, resolutely: “Valar, you’re a terrible liar, jailbird.”

And Mairon couldn’t help it— 

He laughed.

(It sends your heart stumbling.)

“Believe me when I say, seabird, that if I were to deceive you, you would never know.”

“…Right,” you scoff, quick to turn away to hide the budding smile on your face as you carve his laugh and awfully handsome grin into memory. “Now, come and be useful, will you? Before the tide runs in with daybreak.”

He can do that. He likes to be useful.

So he does.

Sauron, however, gathers alarmingly quickly that he’s as helpful as an infant grappling the ways of the water for the first time. Some distant part of him enjoys it, though— learning. It reminds him of his long gone time with Aulë.

Learning to follow your effortless sea-nymph dance across the jagged shallows, memorising how to identify which rocks to flip and the right ways to harvest mollusks or crabs without risking a fingertip, all while unconsciously committing to mind the shanties you hum under your breath.

You tell Halbrand stories and Mairon listens despite the general inanity of it; because he’s a quiet sort, and because he likes the diluting distraction of it all. 

Little things, like how your mother had bequeathed the craft of pottery to you, or that your father had preferred to teach you to fight instead of fish (“I can hardly imagine that,” Sauron muses, which earns him a sharp look and a: “Well, you don’t seem the imaginative type, anyway.”); that Eärien’s artistic strength is adapted from her uncanny skill of observation, and that Isildur is often wayward because he’s as free-spirited as the sun.

The conversation whiles and goes until the sky slowly pales awake, and the fur seals begin to bark and bay at the shorebirds and skimmers diving close to the rolling surfs. When the stretch of Eldanna’s shoreline finally raises, peaks and tidepools drowning back below the cresting of blue seas, the both of you make headway back inland.

“I was telling the truth,” he says, abruptly, which made you stop in your tracks at the beach. Your cloak is billowing from the salt gusts, edges sticking to the wet of your ankles.

“You don’t have to tell me,” comes your honest answer. 

But he wants to. It feels right to. Here Mairon stands bearing witness to the intimacies of your life, while he had nothing to offer you in return beneath the veneer of Halbrand. It’s only fair to do the same. An exchange, if you will. It’s all he’s ever known.

He sets the bucket of skittering crabs on to the wet sand, and dips his feet at the lap of the tide. “I dream of the Dark,” Sauron admits. “Of a light I cannot reach. The ocean is always red— red as my hands— and the rock-faces are always white and blinking.”

Barnacles. You understand now.

“When I wake up, I feel like I’m bracing for something, but I don’t know what,” he says, which he’s quick to realise had been an instinctive lie, and so he amends it with an explanation. “Like I’m charging headfirst into the abyss, and I’m bracing myself for the impact. For a fight or a— punishment.”

Halbrand kicks at a bubbling bump in the water and out pops a shell. (It’s a whelk. Lightning whelk, if Sauron is being precise. He’d listened to you listing the different kinds an hour ago.) 

“Anybody home?” you peer.

“Mh.” Sauron assents and tosses the hermit back to the waves.

He looks at where the open sky meets the sea, thinks of the knee-high swathes of sea oats growing at the coastlines of Valinor if he’d set sail Westwards from Eldanna and choose not to look back. He entertains idly on the idea of home for a beast such as himself— if it’s even possible to tame savagery into such domestications. 

Then he resists on asking you if there’s a difference between making a home and inventing one (those are questions for another sleepless night, he supposes), and instead glances down to where you’ve stepped into one of the remaining tidepools and back out.

A smooth pebble with a perfectly circular hole in its centre, still damp from its discovery, sits in your palm.

“What in Eru’s name is that?” he furrows, watching you wink at him through the gap.

“A hagstone,” you say, unoffended. “My other brother Anárion has one, though he prefers calling it an adder stone. Ammê told us they were naturally-occurring talismans. They ward off anything evil and protects its keeper. Catch.”

He does so with attractive ease.

(…You commit that to memory, too.)

“You don’t actually believe this little thing, do you, seabird?” he asks, tossing the piece up in his hands.

His snort makes you roll your eyes. “See! You are the unimaginative type. Halbrand, it’s the nature of a thing that matters, not its form.”

Right. He’d forgotten you are You; who built a home in the people; whose wound is your geography and history— or lack thereof— and who’s chosen to anchor to Númenor, because your foster family is where you found your true port of call. 

“You Númenóreans are an odd lot,” he settles candidly, and curls his fingers around the hagstone.

“Odd?”

“Superstitious,” he clarifies.

“I prefer traditional,” you volley.

“Try paranoid.”

Your warm laugh breaks with the surf of the shore, makes him tarry on the sight and sound of you.

“Red sky in the morning; sailor’s warning…”

“Red sky at night; sailor’s delight,” Halbrand recites Seamus, scoffing humorously. “I mean… Boarding a ship right foot first? Nailing a horseshoe under the mast, laying a silver coin for Uinen or tattooing swallows to lead the way home? And no whistling on board, lest it’ll challenge the winds; Or so Isildur claims of Manwë.”

“Ah, but don’t forget—”

“—Never rename a ship,” he says in unison.

Halbrand shakes his head, but the fond look on his face is undeniable as you break out into another merry smile. Your plan to chase away his night-terrors seem to have worked perfectly. If you’d thought him handsome before, then he looks utterly divine now. 

“Well, I suppose you’re right. There’s another one, though,” you hum, eyes fixated at the gulls taking wing to and fro their nests, the trawlers sailing home with their morning catch. “Never ever bring harm to a seabird.”

He cocks his head. “If I didn't know any better, seabird, I’d say you were making a threat.”

“And?” you smile. “Do you, jailbird?”

“Do I what?”

“Know better.”

Halbrand laughs again. A charming peal of a sound, canine-wide and punched out. It makes your heart sing— makes you wonder when was the last time he laughed this freely.

“You!” he exclaims once more, but there’s a thunderdrum in his ribs to reckon with all of a sudden, from the way the first break of light begins to dawn on your face and the charming, affectionate grin flowering across it, and so he couldn’t finish his insult after all.

You offer him wine in his dreams. 

Soot blackens your fingers as he takes it, but the stains don’t seem to bother you.

Weighty is a hagstone in his palm.

The sea is blue and quiet—

And barnacles are just barnacles, now.

Footnotes in AO3!

[puckingeccedentesiast]

Hospital - 2

Nova Crosby -

10:17 pm

Luke paced the hall outside the emergency room, the silence in the bustling hospital, unnerving. The only sounds emanating throughout the hall was his heavy footsteps and frantic breathing, erratic like his heart. Anyone passing by would be highly concerned, a young man in a distressed state however clamer then staring at Nova's emotionless face as she stayed in a half conscious state of mind.

He had received a message from Sidney saying he was boarding the plane roughly twenty minutes ago, there hadn't been much update from the doctors on Nova's state as they were currently trying to figure out what's wrong and what the best course of treatment would be.

Luke was roughly on his thirtieth lap down the hall when a door crashes open and a nurse is navy scrubs peered out, when she spotted his pacing figure she moved towards him, calling out gently.

"Are you here for Nova Crosby?" she spoke quietly, hands clasping in front of her. The nurse stood like a pylon in the storm of Luke's emotions as he whipped around and practically sprinted to her, after hearing nothing for the first forty minutes of being in the hospital Luke was becoming understandably desperate.

Anticipating the barrage of questions the nurse tenderly grasped his arm and led him to a small cluster of seats adoring the side of the hall, non-verbally asking him to take a seat. News about any loved on becoming injured and hospitalised is always hard to deal with. Luke tried and failed to form words but no words from any of the 7,000 dialects of the world would accurately depict his feelings.

"Take you're time son." she murmured grazing her hand feather-lightly over the fabric of his hoodie. Luke choked out a wet, unintelligible sound before taking another few gasping breaths desperately trying to tame his mind but it felt akin to herding cats.

"H-how is she." he formed eventually, lips feeling swollen around the words. His brain was still struggling to even comprehend the fact that this situation was real, that Nova was in the emergency department with critical injuries and all he could do is watch and wait for his Nova to come back to him.

"She's going to alright.. eventually." the nurse stated, "I'm not going to sugar coat it. She has a long road ahead of her and will need lots of support but right now they are preparing for surgery to place some disk in her back to counteract the vertebrate discs from deflating."

Luke took a deep breath, "Something tells me that won't be it."

The nurse sighed, the smile lines on her face showing the many happy moments and information she would have shared but now it only sported a frown, "She has a minor concussion, however that is the least of your worries, she also has a fractured sternum but there is little we can do about that." She let out a long sigh, "We will need to keep her under monitoring though at risk of a collapsed lung."

Luke picked at the skin around his finger, taking a deep breath. "That's a lot."

The nurse smiled softly, "It could however be much, much worse too hon." she watched as Luke contemplated this notion, grappling once again with his mind before he nodded reluctantly.

"I think you should take a walk, hon. Go down to the cafe on level two, they do a wonderful banana bread." the nurse smiled gently, standing up and guiding Luke with her.

"I will, you have my phone number, her father's too but he is on a plane here currently so please, call me if anything changes." Luke begged, eyes wide and voice shaky.

"I will hon, I will personally make sure." She smiled gently, "Now go eat! Banana bread remember!"

Luke nodded to her grateful for the support in this treacherous time, as the doors to the elevator opened and he stepped in his phone buzzed.

Sidney - 11:02 I've landed, what's new? I'll be there in half an hour.

[chasefaux]

Will takes another sip of something red. "I, uh, do some fishing here and there? And I also make my own bait."

"The art of fishing requires much from the participator. To successfully reach a satisfactory conclusion, one has to prove they impeccably master the control of not only mental strength and patience but the very nature of their character. When one puts themselves in the long-forgotten position of a hunter, one shows a unique type of restriction over their body– abandoning the full prospect of innate characteristic features and concentrating on hightening the entirety of senses. Bloodcells rushing adrenaline throughout the body, injecting the physical form and soul with both perceptive sensibility and callous mercilessness. Both of those can be permanent. After the hunter has experienced a sensational act such as this, they will probably feel the urge to chase the thrill in the future as well. That forms an addiction no other drug can surpass. They breathe, eat, and sleep only to pass the time until another dose – in which process the hunter loses their independence and sense of time, all in order to feel their head be wiped clean in anticipation of a fight, victory or death, reducing life into a fractured mirror of what once was, a periodic sinusoid of ecstacy and emptiness. Therefore, the sliver of flesh amateurishly impaled on a hook is not the only bait and the unsuspecting aquatic vertebrate not the only harvest – the circle enclosing with the hunter themselves."

"Or maybe I just like fishing because of River Monsters with Jeremy Wade."

"Indeed. For the love of thrill," Hannibal surrenders, "or for one's love for Mr Wade."

[slamdunktheories]

What sort of injury did Sakuragi have? An orthopaedic surgeon weighs in

Hey, gang! I stumbled upon this interesting article sometime back and have been meaning to share it. It's basically an orthopaedic surgeon (and fellow SD fan) analysing what sort of back injury Sakuragi had gotten during the Sannoh match. See article here (in Japanese). Google-translated English version is here.

In short, the surgeon thinks it was either a vertebral body fracture or a lumbar transverse process fracture, and goes on to talk about the recovery period one could expect from such an injury, how the team reacted to it in the story, etc.

His response when asked how Anzai-sensei and Ayako had handled things was pretty funny. “From the POV of an orthopaedic surgeon, it was of course a total fail.” LMAO!

But then he goes on to say something that would probably resonate with every SD fan (that if they had done the right thing and benched Sakuragi... there’d be no story).

As a fan, I'm relieved to hear that the injury seems perfectly realistic and also perfectly recoverable. Thank you Inoue-sensei for sticking to realism even in key/dramatic moments.

Have a gander at the article - it's quite interesting and much more in-depth than what I've shared here! Again, links here:

Original article here (in Japanese). Google-translated English version is here.

[etapereine]

vertebral fractures for nicolas debeaumarché, but that was a really scary crash so good to hear an update.

[injuryclinicsaz]

Understanding Spine Injuries: Causes, Symptoms, and Contemporary Treatment Options

The spine is also responsible for supporting the human frame, safeguarding the spinal cord, and allowing for flexible movement. Sadly, spine injuries are more prevalent than one realizes, particularly after car accidents, falls, or sporting injuries. If you have issues with back pain, numbness, or limited mobility, you might be suffering from the symptoms of a spine injury. Seeking proper spine injury treatment early on is essential for long-term recovery.

At Injury Clinics of Arizona, we are experts at diagnosing and treating spine injuries—returning you to a pain-free, active life. If you require advanced cervical spine injury treatment or personal injury care, we are here to help your healing process.

What Is a Spine Injury?

Spinal injuries encompass any trauma to the bones, muscles, nerves, or discs of the spinal column. Injuries can range from mild, such as muscle strains, to the very severe, such as vertebral fracture or spinal cord injury. The majority of injuries involve three major areas of the spine:

Cervical Spine (neck region)

Thoracic Spine (middle back)

Lumbar Spine (lower back)

Treatment of cervical spine injury is particularly intricate because of its closeness to the brain and the upper part of the spinal cord. Even slight cervical injuries, if not treated, can cause severe long-term complications.

Causes of Spine Injuries

Spine injuries may result from a range of accidents, such as:

Auto accidents – A common cause of spinal injury, particularly whiplash and disc herniation.

Injuries from sports – Contact sports such as football, wrestling, and gymnastics have a high likelihood of causing spinal injury.

Slipping and falling – Abrupt falls, especially in the elderly, usually lead to fractures or damage in the vertebrae or discs.

Injuries in the workplace – Excessive weight lifting wrongfully or repetitive strain can lead to long-term spine damage.

Degenerative disorders – Disorders such as spinal arthritis or degenerative disc disease are developed over time and raise injury risk.

Irrespective of the reason, it is necessary to see a spine specialist near me in case there are symptoms following any physical trauma.

Identification of the Symptoms

Spinal injury may come about through various manifestations based on location and severity. Typical symptoms are:

Chronic back or neck ache

Numbness or tingling of arms or legs

Weakness of muscles or walking difficulty

Restricted motion range

Worsening of pain on movement

In more severe cases, loss of bladder or bowel control

Symptoms related to cervical spine injury may also include dizziness, headaches, and difficulty supporting the head. If you notice any of these signs, especially after an accident, don’t wait—visit a personal injury clinic like Injury Clinics of Arizona for prompt evaluation.

Diagnostic and Evaluation Methods

Proper diagnosis is vital for successful spine injury therapy. Injury Clinics of Arizona starts with a thorough physical assessment followed by sophisticated imaging like:

X-rays – To evaluate fractures or misalignments

MRI scans – To examine disc and soft tissue injury

CT scans – To construct a detailed image of spinal components

Our skilled spine experts collaborate with you to determine the source of your symptoms and create a treatment strategy geared to your needs.

Current Spine Injury Treatments

Treatment can consist of both surgical and non-surgical procedures, depending on the severity and nature of the injury.

Non-Surgical Spine Injury Treatment

Conservative treatments work for most patients, including:

Physical therapy – To regain mobility and strengthen back muscles

Chiropractic manipulation – To restore misalignment and take pressure off nerves

Pain management – Such as medication, injection, or nerve block

Bracing – To stabilize and promote healing

These are very effective for early-stage injury or patients recovering from an injury to the cervical spine.

Surgical Alternatives

When non-surgical treatments fail to relieve symptoms, surgery can be an option. Procedures include:

Spinal fusion – To stabilize injured vertebrae

Discectomy – To eliminate herniated disc material compressing nerves

Laminectomy – To alleviate compression of the spinal cord

Minimally invasive spine surgery – With smaller incisions and reduced recovery time

Your spine doctor near me at Injury Clinics of Arizona will explain all options and guide you in making the most informed choice for your well-being.

Recovery and Follow-Up

Recovery from a spine injury requires patience and diligence. Your recovery can involve:

A customized physical therapy regimen

Home exercises to support spine alignment

Lifestyle changes to alleviate stress on the spine

Schedule regular visits to your reliable personal injury clinic

Our staff at Injury Clinics of Arizona provides you with holistic treatment throughout the recovery process, preventing future injuries and allowing you to live a pain-free life.

When to Visit a Spine Specialist

You should never brush off spine pain—particularly if it's impacting your capacity to work, drive, or sleep. You may have to visit a spine specialist near me if:

Pain or numbness lasting longer than a few days

You've experienced a recent fall or accident

You experience weakness in the arms or legs

You've lost the ability to move or coordinate movements

At Injury Clinics of Arizona, we offer specialized diagnosis and care for every spine injury, from minor strains to intricate cervical spine injury treatment plans.

Conclusion

Spine injuries don't have to control your life—full recovery is within reach with proper care. From non-surgical therapy to complex spine surgery, Injury Clinics of Arizona delivers personalized, expert-guided spine injury care in every level of treatment.

Don't let pain determine your future. When you're looking for a reliable spine specialist near me, our caring staff is here to assist you.

Schedule your consultation today at Injury Clinics of Arizona. Your spine health begins here.

[pointe-power]

A trip to the ER over the weekend revealed a but of damage from a lifetime of heavy weights. Time to get PT done.

Lumbar spine:

Five non rib-bearing vertebral bodies in the lumbar spine. No evidence of

fracture. Grade 1 retrolisthesis of L1 on L2. Moderate disc space narrowing at

T12-L1, L1-L2, L3-L4, and mild disc space narrowing at L5-S1. Mild multilevel

marginal osteophyte formation within the lower thoracic spine and throughout

the lumbar spine. Lower lumbar spine facet joint degenerative changes are

noted. Mild bilateral sacroiliac joint degenerative change with small marginal

osteophytes. Vertebral body heights are maintained. Mineralization is within

normal limits.

Sacrum/coccyx:

No acute displaced sacrum or coccygeal fracture is identified. Mild bilateral

sacroiliac joint degenerative change. Osseous mineralization appropriate.

[alaskan-wallflower]

hi! sorry if this has already been asked but.. (tw for mentioned abuse and angst, zoowee i’m getting comfortable here!) do you think steve has mobility issues?

judging by your posts regarding him, we know he’s often belted and has scars on his back, so i assume most of the belts are landing on his back near his spine. forgive me if i’m wrong, but wouldn’t that do at least a tiny bit of damage to the spine? maybe an unforgivable arch or an unfixable ache?

if not, maybe he just has pains. maybe he sometimes feels as if the belt is still hitting his back, (i feel like this often with touching people). maybe sometimes he stumbles or his legs buckle because he feels like it’s still there, he feels the pain as though he’s just receiving it. maybe he sometimes jumps and flinches, or whips around and throws a punch when someone he doesn’t trust is behind him because he feels that damned belt.

all in all— unless this makes you uncomfortable to answer, how would the excessive abuse mess with steve’s life physically? thank you!! <3

⚠️TW//Abuse

i’m honestly not so sure if the kind of abuse steve went through would count as blunt force since it’s not really heavy, more so just cutting into his skin, but the force exerted makes me think otherwise. blunt force can lead to bruising and swelling, as well as dislocation of discs and fracturing of vertebrate, so maybe on that first bit? i don’t think he’d have trouble walking, but i think that if it were to get bad enough that his vertebrae would be fractured/dislocated than i can see him having difficulty with some movement, especially bending over and stuff, that could be difficult. i don’t really know how to say it cause i don’t wanna sound like im romanticizing/glorifying abuse rather than trying to answer your question, so i’ll leave it at that

i can see him not liking people touching his back suddenly and such—i’m not sure about the feeling it when it’s not there—personally i’ve never experienced it nor have i heard of anyone experiencing it…maybe it’s a distant cousin to phantom limb syndrome? i’m not so sure.

i don’t really feel comfortable answering the last bit…looking at past ways of parenting/somewhat (not really) basing it off of how my mom was when i was a kid (she didn’t use a belt, she used a wooden spoon or her hand) is kinda what i based it off of rather than really like…thinking about it. abuse isn’t really something i wanna romanticize in any way since it is a serious thing and it’s not something i’d want to think about that deeply, yknow? no fault of yours! just my personal way of thinking

sorry if i didn’t answer your question fully—it’s kinda hard since i’m trying to be respectful since it is a sensitive topic while also being thorough. it’s hard to balance sometimes—and don’t apologize! it’s not a bother at all :)

[sassenach77yle]

Here, Dr. Randall.” Joe leaned over and carefully placed the skull in my hands. “Tell me whether this lady was in good health, while I check her legs.” “Me? I’m not a forensic scientist.” Still, I glanced automatically down. It was either an old specimen, or had been weathered extensively; the bone was smooth, with a gloss that fresh specimens never had, stained and discolored by the leaching of pigments from the earth. “Oh, all right.” I turned the skull slowly in my hands, watching the bones, naming them each in my mind as I saw them. The smooth arch of the parietals, fused to the declivity of the temporal, with the small ridge where the jaw muscle originated, the jutting projection that meshed itself with the maxillary into the graceful curve of the squamosal arch. She had had lovely cheekbones, high and broad. The upper jaw had most of its teeth—straight and white. Deep eyes. The scooped bone at the back of the orbits was dark with shadow; even by tilting the skull to the side, I couldn’t get light to illuminate the whole cavity. The skull felt light in my hands, the bone fragile. I stroked her brow and my hand ran upward, and down behind the occiput, my fingers seeking the dark hole at the base, the foremen magnum, where all the messages of the nervous system pass to and from the busy brain. Then I held it close against my stomach, eyes closed, and felt the shifting sadness, filling the cavity of the skull like running water. And an odd faint sense—of surprise?

“Someone killed her,” I said. “She didn’t want to die.”

I opened my eyes to find Horace Thompson staring at me, his own eyes wide in his round, pale face. I handed him the skull, very gingerly. “Where did you find her?” I asked. Mr. Thompson exchanged glances with Joe, then looked back at me, both eyebrows still high.

“She’s from a cave in the Caribbean,” he said. “There were a lot of artifacts with her. We think she’s maybe between a hundred-fifty and two hundred years old.”

“She’s what?” Joe was grinning broadly, enjoying his joke. “Our friend Mr. Thompson here is from the anthropology department at Harvard,” he said. “His friend Wicklow knows me; asked me would I have a look at this skeleton, to tell them what I could about it.” “The nerve of you!” I said indignantly. “I thought she was some unidentified body the coroner’s office dragged in.” “Well, she’s unidentified,” Joe pointed out. “And certainly liable to stay that way.”[...]

“Oh, de headbone connected to de…neckbone,” Joe sang softly, laying out the vertebrae along the edge of the desk. His stubby fingers darted skillfully among the bones, nudging them into alignment. “De neckbone connected to de…backbone…” “Don’t pay any attention to him,” I told Horace. “You’ll just encourage him.” “Now hear…de word…of de Lawd!” he finished triumphantly. “Jesus Christ, L. J., you’re somethin’ else! Look here.” Horace Thompson and I bent obediently over the line of spiky vertebral bones. The wide body of the axis had a deep gouge; the posterior zygapophysis had broken clean off, and the fracture plane went completely through the centrum of the bone. “A broken neck?” Thompson asked, peering interestedly. “Yeah, but more than that, I think.” Joe’s finger moved over the line of the fracture plane.

“See here? The bone’s not just cracked, it’s gone right there. Somebody tried to cut this lady’s head clean off. With a dull blade,” he concluded with relish.

Horace Thompson was looking at me queerly. “How did you know she’d been killed, Dr. Randall?” he asked. I could feel the blood rising in my face. “I don’t know,” I said. “I—she—felt like it, that’s all.” “Really?” He blinked a few times, but didn’t press me further. “How odd.” “She does it all the time,” Joe informed him, squinting at the femur he was measuring with a pair of calipers. “Mostly on live people, though. Best diagnostician I ever saw.” He set down the calipers and picked up a small plastic ruler. “A cave, you said?” “We think it was a…er, secret slave burial,” Mr. Thompson explained, blushing, and I suddenly realized why he had seemed so abashed when he realized which of us was the Dr. Abernathy he had been sent to see. Joe shot him a sudden sharp glance, but then bent back to his work. He kept humming “Dem Dry Bones” faintly to himself as he measured the pelvic inlet, then went back to the legs, this time concentrating on the tibia. Finally he straightened up, shaking his head. “Not a slave,” he said. Horace blinked. “But she must have been,” he said. “The things we found with her…a clear African influence…” “No,” Joe said flatly. He tapped the long femur, where it rested on his desk. His fingernail clicked on the dry bone. “She wasn’t black.” “You can tell that? From bones?” Horace Thompson was visibly agitated. “But I thought—that paper by Jensen, I mean—theories about racial physical differences—largely exploded—” He blushed scarlet, unable to finish. “Oh, they’re there,” said Joe, very dryly indeed. “If you want to think blacks and whites are equal under the skin, be my guest, but it ain’t scientifically so.” He turned and pulled a book from the shelf behind him. Tables of Skeletal Variance, the title read. “Take a look at this,” Joe invited. “You can see the differences in a lot of bones, but especially in the leg bones. Blacks have a completely different femur-to-tibia ratio than whites do. And that lady”—he pointed to the skeleton on his desk—“was white. Caucasian. No question about it.”

Cap 20 diagnosis ~VOYAGER

[puckingeccedentesiast]

nora could just got the wind knocked out of her and passed out maybe a mild concussion?

So, Nova's injuries range from 2 broken ribs, she narrowly escaped having deflated vertebrate disks. from landing on her stick she also fractured her sternum and then yes, a minor concussion.

[entailglobal]

What is Ibandronic Acid 3 mg Injection?  Uses, Benefits, and Side Effects

In today’s rapidly advancing medical world, bone health has taken center stage—especially for individuals at risk of fractures and osteoporosis.  One of the notable treatments in this domain is Ibandronic Acid 3 mg Injection.  Used primarily to prevent and treat osteoporosis in postmenopausal women, this medication has gained global recognition for its efficacy.  In this article, we will discuss what Ibandronic Acid 3 mg Injection is, its uses, benefits, and possible side effects.  We will also highlight its relevance in the pharma industry in India, focusing on the role of Centurion Healthcare Pvt. Ltd.—a key Ibandronic acid 3 mg solution for injection manufacturer, supplier, and exporter in India.

Understanding Ibandronic Acid 3 mg Injection

Ibandronic Acid belongs to a class of drugs called bisphosphonates, which are designed to prevent the loss of bone mass.  This medication is administered intravenously and is typically given once a month to reduce the risk of fractures, particularly spinal fractures, in individuals with osteoporosis.

The Ibandronic Acid 3 mg solution for injection is a sterile, clear, and colorless solution provided in single-use vials.  It is administered by a healthcare professional to ensure proper dosage and minimize any adverse reactions.

Uses of Ibandronic Acid 3 mg Injection

Ibandronic Acid 3 mg Injection is widely used in clinical practice, especially for the following conditions:

1.  Treatment of Osteoporosis in Postmenopausal Women

This is the most common use of the injection.  Osteoporosis is a condition where bones become fragile and brittle.  Postmenopausal women are at high risk due to hormonal changes that affect bone density.  Ibandronic acid helps to increase bone mass and reduce the likelihood of spinal fractures.

2.  Prevention of Bone Complications in Cancer Patients

Patients with metastatic bone disease, particularly breast cancer patients whose cancer has spread to the bones, can benefit from Ibandronic Acid.  It helps reduce skeletal-related events (SREs) like fractures, spinal cord compression, and the need for bone radiation or surgery.

3.  Paget’s Disease of Bone (Off-label Use)

While not its primary use, some doctors prescribe Ibandronic Acid injections for managing Paget’s disease, a condition that disrupts normal bone recycling.

Benefits of Ibandronic Acid 3 mg Injection

The medication offers numerous benefits, making it a preferred choice for both doctors and patients.  These include:

1.  Convenient Dosing

Unlike daily or weekly bisphosphonates, Ibandronic Acid 3 mg Injection is administered once every month, which increases patient compliance and reduces the chances of missed doses.

2.  High Bioavailability

Since it is administered intravenously, the medicine bypasses the gastrointestinal tract, ensuring higher and quicker absorption, especially useful for patients with absorption issues.

3.  Proven Efficacy

Clinical studies have shown that Ibandronic Acid can reduce vertebral fractures by up to 50% in postmenopausal women with osteoporosis when used consistently.

4.  Minimal Gastrointestinal Side Effects

Oral bisphosphonates are often associated with GI problems like acid reflux and ulcers.  With intravenous administration, these side effects are significantly reduced.

Side Effects of Ibandronic Acid 3 mg Injection

Like any medicine, Ibandronic Acid 3 mg Injection may cause side effects in some patients.  These can be mild or serious, depending on the individual's health condition.

Common Side Effects:

Flu-like symptoms (fever, chills, fatigue)

Muscle and joint pain

Headache

Back pain

Rare but Serious Side Effects:

Osteonecrosis of the jaw (ONJ):  More likely in cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy or dental procedures.

Atypical femoral fractures

Renal impairment:  Care should be taken in patients with pre-existing kidney issues.

Patients are advised to stay hydrated and inform their doctor about any pre-existing health conditions or medications to avoid complications.

Ibandronic Acid 3 mg Injection in India: Manufacturing and Global Supply

India has emerged as a leading hub for pharmaceutical manufacturing, and Centurion Healthcare Pvt. Ltd. is proud to be one of the best pharma companies in India.  As a reputed Ibandronic acid 3 mg solution for injection exporter, we ensure world-class quality, stringent regulatory compliance, and ethical business practices.

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Our production facilities adhere to WHO-GMP and ISO certifications, making us a trusted Ibandronic acid 3 mg solution for injection exporter to multiple countries.

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As a leading Ibandronic acid 3 mg solution for injection supplier, we ensure timely delivery, secure packaging, and consistent product availability, both in domestic and international markets.

3.  Experienced R&D Team

We constantly innovate and enhance our formulations, making us a top contender among pharma manufacturing companies in India.

The Role of the Pharmaceutical Industry in India

The pharmaceutical industry in India is globally recognized for its affordability, scalability, and quality.  It is the world's largest provider of generic drugs and supplies over 50% of global demand for various vaccines and medicines.

As one of the best pharmaceutical companies in India, Centurion Healthcare Pvt. Ltd. contributes significantly to this ecosystem.  Our expertise spans across active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs), finished formulations, and specialty injectables like Ibandronic Acid.

Choosing the Right Pharma Partner

When it comes to sourcing critical medications like Ibandronic Acid, it's essential to choose a medicine manufacturing company in India that emphasizes quality, reliability, and patient safety.  With decades of experience, modern infrastructure, and a client-centric approach, Centurion Healthcare Pvt. Ltd. stands tall as the best pharmaceutical industry in India for healthcare professionals and global distributors alike.

We also offer comprehensive contract manufacturing and private labeling services, positioning us as one of the go-to pharma companies in India for customized solutions.

Final Thoughts

Ibandronic Acid 3 mg Injection is a cornerstone treatment for managing and preventing bone-related disorders such as osteoporosis and bone metastases.  With its monthly dosage, excellent efficacy, and fewer side effects, it has become a preferred choice among clinicians worldwide.

At Centurion Healthcare Pvt. Ltd., we are committed to delivering this vital medication with the highest standards of quality and care.  As a top-tier Ibandronic acid 3 mg solution for injection manufacturer, supplier, and exporter, we aim to make advanced treatments accessible to all.

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[forgotten-retrouvaille]

File!

THE FOLLOWING IS FOR INTERNAL DISSEMINATION ONLY . LEVEL 4 CLEARANCE REQUIRED . HIGHLY CLASSIFIED . ONLY FOR THE VIEW OF AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL

PATIENT NAME : JILL VALENTINE .

D.O.B/AGE/SEX : 08.22.1974 / 32 / FEMALE .

CASE # : #208-63-001

COLLECTED : [CLASSIFIED]

RECEIVED : [CLASSIFIED]

DELIVER TO : [CLASSIFIED]

STATUS : UNVIABLE .

VIROLOGY EVALUATION :

POST PHYSICAL EVALUATION AND TREATMENT , SEVERAL EXPERIMENTS DONE ON BLOOD SAMPLES PROVIDED BY PATIENT . UNUSUALLY HIGH RESISTANCE TO CERTAIN MEDICATIONS . DETECTED AMOUNTS OF TYRANT AND SLIGHT TRACES OF EXPOSURE TO BOTH PROGENITOR AND TYRANT ABYSS . BOTH REPORTED TO CURRENTLY BE DORMANT . DETECTED UNIQUE ANTIBODIES RESISTANT TO PROGENITOR AND TYRANT . UNVIABLE FOR PROJECT [CLASSIFIED] . POTENTIALLY VIABLE FOR [REDACTED] . STANDBY ON REPORT FOR FURTHER EXPERIMENTATION - PATIENT MAY REMAIN VIABLE FOR RESEARCH REGARDLESS .

PHYSICAL EVALUATION :

SEVERAL ACUTE FRACTURES REPORTED IN REGIONS INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO : CERVICAL , ABDOMINAL , UPPER EXTREMITIES , LOWER EXTREMITIES , PELVIS , BRACHIAL , FEMORAL , VERTEBRAL.

RECORDED SYMPTOMS OF SHOCK , BOTH SPINAL AND HYPOVALEMIC.

REPORTED EXCESSIVE LOSS OF BLOOD . SEVERAL ACUTE LACERATIONS REPORTED IN MULTIPLE REGIONS OF THE BODY . SEVERAL PUNCTURE WOUNDS LOCATED IN MULTIPLE REGIONS OF THE BODY . REPORTED EXCESSIVE PERIOD OF TIME SPENT UNCONSCIOUS .

CHANCES OF SURVIVAL UPDATED TO POSSIBLE AFTER TREATMENT PROVIDED .

TREATMENT GIVEN :

PATIENT PLACED IN MEDICAL WING . PROVIDED DRIP IV OF REQUIRED NUTRIENTS AND SEDATIVES . PATIENT ALREADY REPORTED TO BE UNCONSCIOUS FOR SIGNIFICANT AMOUNT OF TIME AND SUBSEQUENTLY PLACED INTO A MEDICALLY INDUCED COMA . FRACTURES SET BY MEDICAL PROFESSIONALS .

O BLOOD TRANSFUSED INTO PATIENT AND EMERGENCY SURGERY DONE TO PREVENT FURTHER DAMAGE AND INFECTION . SEVERAL STITCHES DONE . ANTIBIOTICS PRESCRIBED AND GIVEN TO PREVENT INFECTION. PATIENT REMAINING IN MEDICAL COMA UNTIL FURTHER TESTS ARE CONCLUDED AND VIABILITY DEDUCED.

INVESTIGATION RESULT

TYRANT VIRUS DETECTED

TYRANT VIRUS - NEa DETECTED

TYRANT-ABYSS DETECTED

PROGENITOR SLIGHT TRACES

INTERPRETATION :

1. DETECTION OF DORMANT TYRANT VIRUS .

2. DETECTION OF DORMANT TYRANT VIRUS - NEa .

3. DETECTION OF DORMANT TYRANT ABYSS VIRUS .

4. DETECTION OF ANTIBODIES AND FURTHER PROPERTIES CORRELATING TO VACCINE ADMINISTRATION .

5. DETECTION OF SLIGHT TRACES BELONGING TO PROGENITOR .

COMMENTS :

1. INFECTION REPORTED TO HAVE REMAINED DORMANT FOR SIGNIFICANT AMOUNT OF TIME DUE TO CELL MARKERS, SATURATION , AND ANTIBODIES . SIGNIFICANTLY POTENT STRAIN OF TYRANT .

2. SEE ABOVE . STRAIN TESTED AND REPORTED TO MATCH MARKERS WITH EXPERIMENTAL TYRANT-NEa . CAUSE OF HEIGHTENED IMMUNE RESISTANCE : LIKELY

3. SIGNIFICANTLY LESS TRACES IN THE BODY COMPARED TO THE TWO ABOVE . EXPOSURE LIKELY , FULL INFECTION UNLIKELY .

4. SIGNIFICANT AMOUNT OF UNIQUE ANTIBODIES UNSEEN BEFORE . PROPERTIES AND BEHAVIOUR CORRELATE TO BOTH PAST INFECTION AND VACCINE ADMINISTRATION . VACCINE ADMINISTRATION LIKELY TO BE THE CAUSE OF DORMANCY . USEFUL?

5. LIKELY A RESULT OF EXPOSURE TO SEVERAL STRAINS OF TYRANT. SEVERAL BLOOD MARKERS BELONGING TO TRACES OF PROGENITOR . ANTIBODIES INVOLVE TRACE AMOUNTS. USEFUL?

NOTES :

Patient to remain in Tricell's security wing . Patient to remain in medically-induced coma until injuries fully recovered and possibility to begin proper research arises . This is to remain fully classified from all personnel with the exception of those already outlined.

SIGNED BY : ALBERT WESKER ; CHIEF OF STAFF , HEAD RESEARCHER.