User:Don Ranney

Don Ranney, born Donald Alan Ranney June 6, 1932, grew up in Toronto, studied anthropology and linguistics at Victoria College and graduated in medicine at U Toronto in 1958. After 6 years studying surgery in Great Britain, where he married and became a Captain in the Special Air Service, with a Fellowship in the Royal College of Surgeons he went with his wife and three children to India to spend his life performing reconstructive surgery on victims of leprosy.

In 1970 he was appointed Surgeon-in-Chief at the Schieffelin Leprosy Research Center in Karigiri, Tamilnadu. He taught five doctors surgical techniques used to correct leprosy deformities and took over a research project that had been started by his teacher, Dr. S Karat. This allowed him to continue her research and publish five peer-reviewed scientific papers, two of which described new surgical techniques.. Political problems there, described in When Cobras Laugh, a novel co-authored with Ray Wiseman, led to a return to Canada to become Associate Professor of KInesiology at the University of Waterloo.

There he taught for 24 years and established the School of Anatomy, a designation indicating the right to dissect human cadavers. He became known as a Renaissance man because of his broad interests and widely disparate areas of expertise. Years earlier, as a member of the American Federation of Musicians, he had established a jazz band and club in Kingston, and had introduced lacrosse to the children of Toronto by establishing the East Toronto Lacrosse League in 1955.

While at U Waterloo he obtained a diploma in television production at The Banff Centre, researched biomechanics of dance, and was team physician for many local and national sports teams including the Canadian Men’s Softball Team that won the Pan-American Gold Medal in 1983. While teaching anatomy and sports medicine, he published more than a hundred additional scientific papers on topics that varied from anatomy, biomechanics, muscle physiology, and surgery of the hand, to work-related injuries, and neuroanatomy of chronic pain. At the same time he ran a part-time clinic for athletes and those injured at work or in motor vehicle accidents. Teaching neuroanatomy he became an expert on the anatomy of pain, featured on his website, http://www.personal.uwaterloo.ca/ranney.html.

He has a diploma from the American Board of Disability Analysts and is a member of 15 professional organizations, including The Writers’ Union of Canada. In his eighth decade he decided to slow down a little and write stories about his exciting life. He hasn’t jumped out of an airplane since 1981. As President of Disability Assessment Services, Inc. he now runs a part-time clinic for those who need a medico legal report concerning orthopaedic disability. In is spare time he also writes novels and walks with his Golden Doodle, Bear.