Posted by 
Open Bone Fracture- Watercolor
This project focuses on the healing time and mechanisms involved in an open fracture injury using watercolor paint and pencils as a medium. Every icon/ image stands for something: pills are for medications, the stethoscope means medical help, the nerve represents pain signals, the clock represents healing time, the shield is how blood is able to fight infections, and the lower right corner is a cartilage web for future bone growth.
This project illustrates the time and process of healing an open fracture injury. It is done in a very creative way using watercolors to show not only the injury not but different symbols such as the clock which represents the amount of time that it takes to heal this injury, pills which represent something a doctor might prescribe someone with this injury to help the pain centers from constantly firing and reduce the stress on the body, a stethoscope which shows that these injuries need medical assistance for the bone to be realigned. It then goes over the timeline of healing this injury and how the body does that. First within the first five days of the injury a hematoma will form around it to increase the blood flow. From 5-10 days soft cartilage is starting to form between the two segments of the fractured bones and cells start to build bone structure again. By 10-16 days more cartilage and fibrous tissue has grown and inflammation starts to reduce. From 16-21 days inflammation continues to reduce and hard callus bone formation has appeared. By 21-35 days inflammation is gone and the bone is almost done healing but will need a couple more months to completely finish. Most bones heal completely after a couple of months with only ten percent of breaks never completely healing. This amount of time is very important as it can prolong or worsen if you use the fractured bone too early.