True or False:

The typical orthopedic surgeon has much larger hands than the rest of us.

If you answered "true", go immediately to the head of the surgery class, and say hello to Ingham's Herb Ross, D.O., a veteran orthopedic surgeon, whose jumbo-sized hands surely deserve a mention in the Guinness Book of Records.

During more than 30 years of operating on Ingham patients and intercollegiate athletes from nearby Michigan State University, Dr. Ross has used his huge, rock-solid hands to repair injured bones and joints for thousands of grateful Michiganders.

Ask "Dr. Herb" to account for his remarkable appendages, and the 65-year-old surgeon laughs out loud. "It's true," booms the East Lansing-based physician, while holding both hands aloft. "They're huge. You know, my dad took a picture of me when I was one month old -- and all you could see was hands and feet!

"When he suggested I go to dental school, I told him: 'Dad, I'll never get these hands in anybody's mouth!' For a while, he was recommending I make some real money by becoming a boxer, but I decided to go to medical school, instead. "You know, I treat a lot of football players over at Michigan State, and these hands have really turned out to be an asset . . . because I can get them around a football player's leg!"

National Reputation as an Orthopedics Sports Surgeon

A skilled arthroscopic surgeon who helped pioneer the arthroscopic technique at Ingham in the late 1970s, Herb Ross now owns a national reputation as an orthopedic specialist with a special knack for treating injuries among college athletes.

"I've been privileged to work with the kids at Michigan State," says the affable Dr. Ross "These are first-class men and women, and they're incredibly dedicated to their sports. Serving as a team doctor is a highly rewarding experience. I know I'll never forget moments like the one at the Rose Bowl in 1988 -- when I ran out on the field to congratulate our players for beating Southern Cal.

"And how about January of last year, when Tom Izzo and his basketball players won the NCAA Championship at Indianapolis? That was a tremendous thrill, and I wouldn't trade it for anything. But serving as a "team doc" also has its stressful moments.

Treating A Broken Neck: "Don't Move!"

During the past decade and a half, he's had several close brushes with disaster, when players were struck down by injuries that could have been crippling or even fatal.

"Thankfully, we've never lost an athlete," recalls Dr. Ross, who says he urged his own four sons to play organized sports in spite of the risk of injury.

"We've never had a death on the field -- in spite of several close calls. Three or four years ago, we had a defensive back break his neck during an away football game. Amazingly, he got up and ran off the field after being knocked senseless. Then I noticed him sitting on the bench with his head cocked way over to one side. Fortunately, I remembered a medical illustration I'd seen, and the thought flashed through my mind: He's got a break, with a unilateral facet [spinal joint] dislocation.

"Sure enough, the young man stood up a few minutes later, and his arm went numb. So we grabbed him and immobilized his neck. I hollered at him: 'Don't move!' We got the collar [rigid neck brace] on him, and took him straight to the hospital. In the end, everything turned out all right. The young man recovered and rejoined the team as captain, and was an inspiration for the other players. He also went on to score the winning TD against the same team the next year!"

A Pioneer In Arthroscopy

Dr. Ross is a stocky, powerfully built surgeon who sounds like a football coach when he describes the "attitude" required for successful surgery. "Whatever happens, you can't quit; you gotta get it done!" says Dr. Ross. He adds that the best part of his job is the feeling he gets when former players thank him for fixing their injuries . . . while also reporting that the bones or joints he repaired many years ago are still functioning well.

"Just a couple of years ago," he remembers, "I attended 10-year reunion of the '88 Rose Bowl team, and I spent an evening with everybody who'd participated in that event. Well, there were several players I'd operated on at the dinner, and they all told me they were getting along just great. Not one of those kids I'd treated wound up with a significant disability. And that was a terrific feeling, believe me. They asked me to speak after dinner, and I told everybody: 'I just want to say how happy I am to know you guys so well . . . inside and out!'"

"I learned everything from Lanny!"

Whenever Herb Ross looks back on his long and storied career as a surgeon, he thinks first of the man who taught him "the basics of arthroscopic surgery -- the legendary Dr. Lanny Johnson, the Ingham orthopedist who pioneered arthroscopic surgery.

"I learned everything from Lanny," says Dr. Ross, while recalled the heady years of the late 1970s and early 1980s, during which he and a few other surgeons put Ingham on the map as the site where arthroscopy was developed and perfected in this country.

"Lanny was a great innovator, of course. The Japanese actually invented the device back in the 1930s, by attaching a tiny light bulb to a bladder scope. Then Lanny started experimenting with the scope in the mid-seventies, and Ingham built a special [operating] suite for arthroscopy." Drs. Johnson, Ross and David Shneider really went to work with it.

"When fiber optics came along a few years later, the tools got much better, and arthroscopy really took off. Today it's used everywhere, for all kinds of surgery, including abdominal procedures and gall bladder removal."

In Surgery, Prepare For The Unexpected

After nearly 30 years in the operating room, the man with the biggest hands in Lansing says he hasn't slowed down yet -- and that he's enjoying "the huge challenge" of orthopedic surgery more than ever.

"The bonus is you become more innovative," he chuckles, "which means that you can think your way out of more situations than before. Who knows what you'll find during a surgery? The anatomy may be different than you expected, or the joint may have been damaged more than you expected it to be.

"The key thing to remember is there's an answer for every problem you encounter in surgery, provided you don't quit. Just the other day, for example, I was operating on a young man's shoulder, and I got in there and discovered that his cartilage rim had been torn away, really ripped up. I had to put a series of screws in there, one after the next, and each one took at least half an hour. Several hours went by, and the sweat was running down my face.

"But I kept after it. I got the shoulder stabilized, finally, and I knew it was going to hold. That young man is going to be fine! I really look forward to walking out after the operation, and telling the relatives in the waiting room: 'It worked!'"