Update on my leg & the TSA
 

I had a really bad leg injury about 3 years ago. No metal parts at all. Every time I go through a TSA checkpoint I'm taken aside for questions about my leg.

It turns out the newest range of TSA scanners measure the mass and size of our legs and compare them. If they are not similar, you get questioned.

Mine are not similar and the injured one is often swollen.

So now I know why I get stopped every single time.

Interesting. My legs are wheels. Will I get stopped when I use a new wheelchair? (I'm picking on the TSA, not you.)

I know that you're just being cute. All OK with me.

This 'thing' with the TSA has happened 100% of the time since my injury. Finally in Buffalo NY the TSA agent told me why. I'm glad to finally know as I've tried switching my travel outfit (which obviously is pointless) and even my socks.

There is nothing at all I can do about it. I have to figure on a delay every time I go through the TSA. No agent has ever asked to see my leg. They just touch it in a couple places. Very carefully. I wonder if I had an arm injury it would be the same?

I've only rarely gotten extra screening due to health issues, but twice in one year I got extrea screening on my left wrist.

I've never injured that wrist. I was wearing short sleeves, so the wrist was clearly visible. No watch, no bracelet, no ring on that hand (and I've got really skinny wrists!). "Something" alerted on the scanner; the agent pulled me aside and felt my wrist and then cleared me to go. The agent had no explanation as to what might have triggered an alert. Sometimes I think they make things up to explain what they don't understand.

Last year one of my arms was notably larger than the other (swelling from some nasty bruising and then fluid on the joint from the injury). Only once did anyone from TSA say anything, but it was along the lines of, "Woah what happened!?".

Legs under long slacks seem to be a particular interest of the TSA. More than likely logical.

The scanners pick up all kinds of "anomalies". They generally take seconds to resolve.

Yes, in my case about 30 seconds to sort out!

Saw my doc today. She joked that the TSA scanners may have a use for medical needs as she has no machine that can do such comparisons between limbs.

Sheer idiocy, on one hand - I have friends who had polio (yeah, I am older than dirt) and a couple of them have legs of different diameters. I can understand they might at first look think of someone wrapping drugs or contraband against a leg, but I'd think the "nude-o-scopes" do a better job than that.

(Sadly, what we didn't know then was the ordeal is hardly over - post-polio syndrome often comes calling decades later with its own set of challenges. Hi, Patty and Diana... in case you are dreading here.)