Health Report

I decided to break with the usual political stuff and publish one report on my health issues. Enjoy!

Back in March after a longish day of recovering our vegetable garden --- howing weeds, raking in fertilizer, laying down top soil, heaving bags, and planting new plants, I experienced about a week of bad pain in my shoulder and neck. Muscle relaxant took the pain away immediately after I saw my doctor but I then realized that I had lost a lot of mobility in my right arm, similar to when I tore my rotator cuff. Doctor said I should go to physical therapy so we started working on it. However, the therapist kept suggesting that it was caused by a pinched nerve rather than further tear in my rotator cuff. Eventually that lead to an MRI on my neck and that was when things got exciting. 

It turned out that I had two disks that were so badly herniated that they were squeezing my spinal cord to say nothing of the nerve roots that radiate out into the arms. Each of the disks above and below were also bad but not as bad yet. There were also bone spurs on the front of my spine that have been causing some difficulty swallowing bulky objects. Given the MRI data (you wouldn't believe the views that you can nowget with MRI techniques!) the doctors were amazed that I was just having numbing in my fingers at night and the loss of mobility in my arm. 

What made us go ahead with major surgery (an important step for someone who had never had surgery in his life) was the obvious fact that further deterioration in the neck could have grave consequences for the rest of my body to say nothing about further and permanent problems with my arms and hands. Any way, we sought the advice of two surgeons and chose the one my doctor recommended --- Ali Mesiwala (do any Anglo kids ever become talented surgeons now-a-days!). We decided to go ahead with this as fast as possible on the advice of the first surgeon, which meant canceling two lovely trips that we had been looking forward to. One doctor, looking at the MRI while I signed consent forms for the procedure, said he was amazed I could use my hands at all!

In the actual procedure, the surgeon makes an incision in the front of your neck and clamps aside your esophagus and wind pipe as well as various muscles and blood vessels. Then, using a microscope, he removes the disk materials, cleans the surfaces, inserts spacers with bone materials, grinds off bone spurs in the front, and screws on a titanium panel involving all of the disks affected. In my case, he removed four disks and attached five vertebrates. The incision is stitched up with absorbable thread and a liquid, insoluble bandage is painted over it. This took about 1 1/2 hours though I was completely out for about four hours. He had an emergence back injury on a young woman that he had to sneak in before me. All in all he was doing procedures from 7:30 AM on Monday until 4:00 AM on Tuesday. I was in my room by about 11:00 PM.

Recovery is primarily overcoming any nausea from the anesthetic (I had none), dealing with pain (I had very little), and regaining your ability to swallow and speak. Swallowing is going along though I continue on a soft diet. I am still pretty hoarse. All of that is from the trauma of being pushed aside for access to the cervical spine. The long-term recovery assumes enough bone growth to fuse the vertebrates behind the titanium panel. They look for that happening in about three months --- hence the hard cervical collar. No bending down, lifting, or twisting and worst of all no driving. It's going to be a long summer!

So that's about all I can say at this point, but I feel very fortunate to have had a fantastic surgeon and I feel very fortunate that my immediate recovery has gone so well thus far. Thanks to everyone for all the good wishes!