Stupid Question Du Jour

 It took me a while to get around to wondering this, I do admit.  It comes out of morning ritual and recent life experience, coupled with (temporarily missing) shoes.

Piqued your curiosity yet?

Here's the question: which weighs more, metal or muscle? To make it a fair question, I can't help by quantifying the amount of each in question. But here's how it came to mind.

You know I just had a second shoulder surgery. In the process they removed one of five muscles on the top of the shoulder called rotator cuffs. That was replaced by titanium, two interlocked pieces where each end screwed into bones formerly connected by 5 of those muscles. It created a new joint where, once fully seated in place, pain nerves were replaced by smoothly sliding metal. Not all pain nerves, as that is a work in process, to be aided by time, bone healing, and 4 remaining muscles taking on the load formerly borne by 5. Hence the need for weeks of physical therapy after healing, or PT. The arthritic grinding is theoretically removed, though nobody has explained whether bone was also removed, just that the moving/grinding bits no longer connect to nerves.

The morning ritual is a weigh-in, sometimes immediately post shower, sometimes fully clad and in shoes. Variations are usual, depending on everything. It's been pretty stable for months within those variations. I can usually account for shoes, winter clothing, and meals/digestion for adjustments in results. I weighed in this morning without the shoes and got a slightly different reading from most similar mornings, prompting my curiosity. And to be honest, I never thought to do a closely timed comparison pre and post surgery since the one major one around 20-some years ago which removed a lot of tissue in order to check a sudden growth for cancer. (It was negative.) In the space of hours I "lost" 11 pounds.  These past two shoulder replacements basically didn't move the recent needle on the scale except within the usual parameters with the usual causes.

So is it a stupid question? Does somebody out there weigh body parts removed and body part replacements and do their best to make them match, ounce per ounce? Does anybody in the world worry about whether people suddenly emerge from the hospital with a tilt, especially if they're only getting one side fixed instead of both? And if so, who? And why?

And you're still reading this?