The curtain rises to reveal a man in a lab coat standing in what appears to be a marginally retrofitted morgue. A voice over declares “Welcome to Fluffy Science, where we are proud to present- Fun with fluffy physiology, featuring Dr. Frank Redacted”
“Greetings,” The man in the lab coat gestures to himself, “I’m Doctor Frank Redacted, and to-day on fun with fluffy physiology, we’ll be discussing fluffy limb amputation and restoration. Please take a look at this fluffy.” The camera cuts to a puke green unicorn fluffy standing on table. “At first glance, there’s nothing wrong with this fluffy’s front right leg, but on closer inspection-” the camera zooms in on the fluffy’s leg, “There’s still nothing wrong with it, but let’s cut it off.”
“Seeing as how this is a smarty, I would normally remove the limb while it is awake for maximum effect, but in order for you at home to still be able to hear me without shouting over a screaming fluffy, I’m going to render the fluffy unconscious. There are many ways to do this, although most are very dangerous to the fluffy. Here, I’m going to use hypnosis to somewhat safely render the fluffy unconscious.”
Dr. Redacted leans over so the fluffy can see his face, before speak-singing in a monotone:
“The fluffy is falling asleep”
“The fluffy is falling asleep”
By this point, the fluffy looks drowsy indeed.
“The fluffy has fallen asleep”
“The fluffy will stay asleep”
To prove the fluffy was indeed out cold, Dr. Redacted shoves his gloved thumb up the fluffy’s butt. When the fluffy makes only slight movements, Dr. Redacted gives the camera a thumbs up, using the thumb still in the fluffy’s butt.
After quickly washing his hands, Dr. Redacted approaches the fluffy holding a scalpel and forceps. “Removing a fluffy’s limb is very simple, especially if you aren’t interested in ever restoring the limb, at which point it is as simple as slicing the limb off, and then cauterizing the wound.” He begins cutting the limb near the shoulder, “Today, however, since we are both amputating and restoring the limb, functionally just replacing it, I will perform a few steps to make the later restoration quick and easy, such as identifying the nerve clusters” he points to a few bundled strands of fibrous tissue with the scalpel, “and tying off the blood vessels” he indicates the blood vessels before rapidly tying them off with well-practiced technique.
“Fluffy limbs only have two arteries and two veins important enough to worry about, likely to make the lives of the planned ‘Official Hasbio Fluffy-Vet’ easier, seeing as how most of them would have been paid minimum wage after two weeks of simple surgical training.”
With this, he severs the tied off vessels and the isolated nerve clusters. “With that done, the rest of the stuff here isn’t that important, and you can really just cut through it until you reach the joint, or if you are amputating lower on the limb, until you reach the bone. If you are amputating lower, simply break the bone now. Since I am amputating at the joint, I need merely dislocate the limb and after severing the tendons, being careful to leave enough of an anchor to attach the new limb to, there is now nothing holding the limb to the body.” Straightening up, he plucks the dissevered leg from the operating table before tossing it, basketball free throw style, into a bio-hazard bin across the room.
“Now if I only wished to amputate, here I would sew up the skin and be finished. However, we will instead now restore the limb using donor tissue. For this, all we need is another fluffy, and it’s usually best to have a relatively healthy tissue donor.” As he says this, Dr. Redacted reaches below the table and produces a constipated looking brown female pegasus with slightly crooked wings. “Interestingly enough, Hasbio has further simplified things, since fluffy ponies only have one blood type, and have only one immune system marker, meaning that any fluffy pony tissue can be transplanted to any other fluffy without risk of the donated tissue being rejected.”
The brown pegasus looks confused, clearly having understood none of what has just been said, and begins to ask, “Wha Mistah mean awm-pu-twate?” But it is cut off by the application of a zip-tie holding its mouth shut.
“Now while I could use a limb from this fluffy, to save time, I’ll use one I prepared earlier,” he produces, again from under the table, a horrendously clashing cyan fluffy leg, blood vessels clamped, upon a blue surgical cloth.
“That said, I guess I don’t actually need this fluffy.” With that he pulls a pistol and suppressor out of his lab coat. “I like to use a Walther PPK since I like the look, and because it also suppresses well. At a facility like this, it might be a good idea to use a suppressor so as not to alarm the other fluffies.” He then screws the suppressor onto the pistol before beating the fluffy to death with it.
After shoving what was left of the would-be fluffy tissue donor off of the operating table into a bin on the floor, Dr. Redacted gently picks up the prepared donor leg and moves it next to the still sleeping fluffy. “Now, to restore the limb, the amputation process is basically just reversed.” With a careful twist, he pops the leg bone into the shoulder socket, and then indicates towards the anchor points for the tendons. “With the joint re-articulated, we can start attaching the tendons from the donor limb to the anchor points on the recipient.” He rapidly sews the tendons into place with small single interrupted sutures, taking only two minutes for all five.
“That done, we next align the blood vessels and suture in place.” This was even more rapid, with all four connections sewn in less than ninety seconds. “As for the nerve clusters, a single suture is sufficient to hold the two ends close enough to knit themselves together over the next day or so. It’s actually pretty unlikely for a given nerve fibre to end up connecting to the correct nerve ending, but the fluffy brain will rapidly correct itself and the fluffy should be able to move the limb after only a few days, with full function after around a week.” Nerve tissue now correctly positioned, he briefly tidies up the rest of the leg’s internals before starting to suture the skin. “Finally, a series of single interrupted sutures is all we need to close up the skin, and then you can wake the fluffy.”
He slaps the fluffy across the face, shouting, “WAKE UP ASSHOLE!!!”
The fluffy wakes up confused, seeing it’s new limb, but unable to move it yet. “In order to see how the recovery usually progresses, we’ll take a look at a fluffy who had its leg restored two days ago,” He says, picking up the fluffy from the operating table, breaking its neck, tossing it in a bin, and pulling another fluffy with an obviously mismatched leg from under the table. He gently prods the foot pad of this new fluffy’s replacement limb in several places, each eliciting a small muscular twitch.
“Mistah, dat tickwe fwuffy nu weggie! Nu weggie hab feels, nu weggie-” The fluffy is cut off as its head is flattened by a heavy book.
Brushing away this latest fluffy, Dr. Redacted pulls yet another fluffy with a mismatched leg from under the table. This one walks around normally, the off color leg acting appropriately in sequence with the other legs. “After a week or two, if not for the color difference, it’s nearly impossible to tell that the fluffy wasn’t born with that leg, at which point we can consider the fluffy’s recovery complete.” He picks up the fluffy and carries it as he walks and talks. “Since fluffies are accident prone, you may well need to have a damaged or otherwise non-viable limb replaced. If done correctly, the procedure is unlikely to traumatize the fluffy beyond whatever event damaged the limb.”
He opens a door to a lush field with a gentle stream leading to a small pond. “Once healed, the new limb should be just as durable as the other limbs, and the fluffy is now capable of running and playing to its heart’s content.” With that, Doctor Redacted drop kicks the fluffy into the pond where it drowns.