"...a high-pitched whine, like the whine of rotary saws cutting into wood at the pulp mill where his daddy worked, and a high-frequency vibration ran up his upper spine. [The surgeon] was cutting off the tips of his right thighbone and right shinbone where they came together in the knee to get rid of the "osteoarthritic crud," as [the surgeon] seemed to enjoy calling it... Then they were supposed to fit pieces of titanic chromium cobalt - or was it cobalt chromium titanium? - it made no particular difference - onto the ends of the bone to create a new knee joint, with a piece of polyethylene heavy molecular ...whatever-it-was. ...It was some piece of plastic somthingorother that replaced the cushion of cartilage between the two bones. They were sawing away down there, and he actually liked the vibration when it ran up his spine." Tom Wolfe. (1998). A Man in Full. New York: Bantam, pp.657-658.