Undergraduate / Williams Supplement: Looking through a Window (arthroscopic imagery) [3]

The prompt is: Imagine looking through a window at any environment that is particularly significant to you. Reflect on the scene, paying close attention to the relation between what you are seeing and why it is meaningful to you. Please limit your statement to 300 words.

Just to warn you guys, this is a very rough first draft. What do you think of the topic? Should I employ more description, scientific terminology, or ease up on either? Any suggestions are really appreciated. Thank you!

My scene is not beautiful. It is a curling mass of tissue and bone, only interrupted by fragments of ligaments cast aside in anguish, dislodged from their proper location. I would go as far as to say that my scene is gross. At least, at first glance, it may seem to be so.

As you might have guessed, my window is not one with panes or a curtain. Rather, it is a way through which the complexities and genius of the human body are observed. It is an arthroscope, the instrument used to extract images of a joint.

I received arthroscopic images of my knees after both of my surgeries to reconstruct my anterior cruciate ligaments (ACL). These images should have scared or repulsed me, as they were pictures of not only the inside of my body, but of the remains of my torn ACLs and a graphic rendition of the repair. Instead, I found myself looking through them over and over again as I recovered. I knew that my ACL had been constructed from a hamstring autograft, but only the pictures offered me insight into the ingenuity of my reconstruction. I could see the bone tunnels into which the graft had been fastened, and the dissolvable screws that held it there. The end result offered a seamless interplay between the natural and the artificial. Even with all of this innovation, the knee still behaved normally; that was incredible. I could not stop running my hand over my knee, astounded that something so amazing could exist in such a seemingly simple joint.

These images were beautiful to me. The intricacies of the human body as well as the miraculous nature of medicine sparked a new passion in me. Today, I am still fascinated by the power of modern medicine and enthralled by the possibility of future advancements, and I cannot wait to be a part of them.