OH HAPPY DAYS!

As you can imagine, after three months of continuously wearing a plastic neck brace I was dying to get it off.  It's hot, fairly uncomfortable, and prevents me from looking around without twisting my entire body.  It makes it difficult to sleep, take a shower or walk on the street.  I am constantly backing into things (usually other people), or banging my legs into things because I can't look down easily.  My thighs haven't stop being bruised since I put the thing on.  It was supposed to come off in mid-July before I left Florida, but my sentence was extended another six weeks at that time.  Last week I was finally able to get new xrays done and send them back home.  The hospital in Bangladesh was an experience.  The xray equipment was somewhat modern, but also seemed to be acting up.  I am fairly sure that they ended up taking four or five xrays for every one that was needed - they'd line everything up, hide, a buzzing noise would ensue, and then they'd move it all over again (more than 20 times).  This went on for fifteen minutes, and in the end I only received four xrays.  You can't beat the cost though - about $20 for the xray films, digital xrays on a disk, and the radiologist's report.

I went back the next day to retrieve the CD, dashed home and e-mailed the images to my surgeon - and then found out his system wouldn't allow the attachments.  I almost cried.  Then my friend Michael came to the rescue.  He downloaded the images, burned them to a DVD, and sent the DVD by FEDEX to the surgeon the same day.  And today I heard from the surgeon.  I have healed enough that I can remove the collar on a daily basis, and just keep it on an as-needed basis.  And yet, I'm almost afraid to do so.  I've worn it so long that I feel very weird, naked and vulnerable without it.  After being in a great deal of pain after the two day trip to Asia, my pain levels have settled down over the past month.  I still have pain, but I'm hoping it will continue to dissipate, especially after I no longer have the collar pressing down on my shoulders and neck.  We'll see.  I have very little range of movement in my neck.  I hope this is from the muscles being essentially locked in place for three months, and not because my neck is so completely fused that it will no longer twist.  I'll have to see if I can get physical therapy to loosen things up.  I'll keep you posted.

Oh, here are some of the xrays of my bionic neck.  I still can't believe they got the titanium plate and huge piece of bone through the small incision in my neck.  Please consider being an organ donor.  My surgery wouldn't have been possible without a donor bone graft (or would have required surgery to remove bone from both of my own hips with considerable additional pain and recovery time).