LaForte Fractures

Sharing for no good reason: We have been watching The Pitt, Noah Wylie's new not-ER hospital drama. In the second episode, they treat a guy who hit a car door while riding on a scooter and face-planted, suffering a LaForte Fracture, in which the top of his face comes lose from the bottom jaw (they refer to it as a "floating face"). They show (because this is not a network show) the doctors moving the top of his face back into place.

This development excited us because I suffered a similar injury in a bicycle accident a couple years ago. Mine was a LaForte II (only the upper jaw was loose), as opposed to the LaForte III on the show. Still, it took us back. (My Fed Courts students from that semester sent me a get-well card wishing me a speedy recovery from my "concrete and particularized injury." They learned something.)

I had one nitpick: They made a big point of saying that the guy was not wearing a helmet, intimating that this worsened the accident and "this is what happens when you're stupid and don't wear a helmet." This is nonsense. I was wearing a helmet. A helmet does not help when you slam face-first in the pavement.