October 11, 2007

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                                               Per Request

  A fellow Xangan,  a lady who is undergoing her own ration of pain has asked me to tell about my broken neck.

  September 5, 1997 on the way home from Eugene, Oregon,  shortly after noon, five minutes or more since I put a cigarette out in the ashtray, on I-80 at Rock Springs, Wyoming on a clear sunny day our car ran afoul of a piece of oil patch gear that had dropped off a truck slightly ahead of us.
  
  We rolled, end over ended, crossed the lanes of opposing traffic and ended up a bit past the shoulder of the road.  I was out for a short spell and realized though that I was hurt for sure.   My first concern was for my wife Heather as she was not in the car.    Yet I hurt too much to move more than a little.

  People had tried to open the door on  my side, but couldn’t get it open.   Fortunate I was that they couldn’t.   EMT people came and my first feel of immense gloves holding my head made me realize the size of my injury.  Didn’t know what it was then.    They broke out the windshield after padding me and then took me out via that opening.  The car roof was dented over the driver’s seat – deeply.

  They put me on a backboard and used the weights to shore up my head so that it couldn’t move.  One other good thing they did was humor me.   I asked them about my wife and they told me she was being checked out on one of their vehicles.  That didn’t do it for me,  finally at their urging she shouted to me that she was alright.

  They took me to the hospital on the other side of the road where they decided to fly me to Denver Health Medical Center in Denver.    Their trauma unit is far famed.

  I had a wonderful nurse on the flight to Denver, who wouldn’t administer pain relief drugs but made wonderful TLC actions that diverted me from my pain.   A helicopter flight from the airport at the southern end of the area, with its familiar whop, whop, whop reminded me of the sounds I had heard in Viet Nam when I was there.

  By the time they got me into emergency I was hurting severely,   and by then I was having a nicotine fit,  I needed a ciggy.   In hospital skivvies I crawled off the gurney and was headed for the street to see if it was possible for me to bum one from a passerby.  I was gently escorted back to the gurney.  The second try,  they put me back and tied me,  which I proceded to untie and try again.  Somewhere in there a shot was given me and the weirdness began,  I guess I was laid on a table that was slanted,  but it appeared to me that personnel was walking out of the ceiling,  it was a strangeness I had not encountered even when I was in the depths of alcoholism.

  There was a hiatus of consciousness then,    I am sure x-rays were done and such.   I awoke as they began to install a halo (a ring of metal with four pointed, threaded pins screwing through the perimiter)  It is precisely located,  the pins screwed into the skull at a very precise depth, governed by the reading on a torque wrench.  Needless to say that even though under the inflence of sedation I hollered my lungs out.

  Fitting me with the jacket sheepskin lined that held the struts from the halo continued the unpleasantness until I zeroed out totally.

  I woke up in a bed with a nurse standing beside me,  who told me that if the hurt got too bad,  all I had to do was to press the button and tell the nurse over the intercom that I was hurting and they would do something for me.   And it worked,  I would press the button and a nurses voice would sound off to me and after  hearing me the nurse might say, “Well you are not due for your pain shot just yet, but I’ll bring  something to  help.”  And they brought me something,  probably Tylenol that eased things a bit.

  I was on a bunch of stuff,  Flexeril for one thing.   I was there for quite a while, gradually coming back to the world of the living,  was taken down to where the patients with limited mobility were given meals and encouraged to do as much for myself as I could.  It took two hands to bring a coffee cup to my lips and silverware seemed to be too heavy to lift.

  After about a week I was taken to phycical therapy where I would be given gentle exercises,  that went on for a while until one day with a therapist on each side of me I was assisted from bed and stood on my own.   They walked with me a bit and then had me taken back to  my room.   Thus it was for a few days,  until they let me walk on my own,  keeping a close eye on me all the way. 

  One morning the doctors on their rounds said, “Congratulations.”   Not feeling up to snuff, I growled, “What the hell for ?”  One of them replied,  “You are no longer a smoker,  you have been through chemical withdrawal.”  Big whoopee at the time for them,  but I was unimpressed,  thinking I would soon be smoking as soon as I got out of hospital.

  It went on quite a while,  me gaining a bit more motor control at meals,  going a bit  further in physical therapy.

  Constantly I would be taken to one specialist or another to be examined.   I found out that the muscles on one side of my upper body were atrophying so physical therapy was slanted to remedy that.

  Between the sheepskin jacket,  the struts to the halo and the halo itself I was usually in misery, and burning up all the time as well.

  They told me I was responding well,  and a couple of the hospital personnel made a visit to our apartment to see if they thought I could get around there alright.  Which included their talking to Heather to see if she was up to caring for  me,  her extra   work and all.

  So I went home and visits from a therapist began,  She was a taskmaster but I was showing improvement all along.   Still in misery though.   The halo and appurtenances were a portable torture device and although necessary highly uncomfortable.

  Several days a week I had to show up at hospital to see one or another of the doctors and some times one after another.   Thing that bothered this night owl was that they were always at eight AM -  and for a man who had worked third shift most of his work life, eight AM was going to bed time.

  Trying to lay still for MRIs was a bummer for  me  as the halo and equipment was hard to live with in any event and worse for X-ray and MRI.

  I weaned from heavy pain medication in good order and Tyenol was the staple for me.   Flexeril (a muscle relaxant) remained on my dosage for quite a long time.

  Then the days went into weeks and then months with the physical therapist coming by and overseeing my exercises,  and walking the quad at the apartment complex with me.  I was able to increase my exercise and on a visit to the doctor at hospital  I was told that the atrophy had reversed and muscle was rebuilding or whatever it was called,  I am sure there is a medical term for it but don’t remember what it is.

  Then I began to have trouble and pain from the halo,  our son came over after a big snowstorm and gently drove us to hospital.   I saw the doctor and he sent me to X-ray.  After reading the x-ray he told me that one of the pins was working its way into my skull.    Off came the halo, the struts,  that damnable sheepskin jacket and I was fitted with a cervical collar.   After almost a year I had a modicum of comfort and could lay in bed like a human.  It was a month or so after that the physical therapist told me that she was discharging me as she had done all she could for me and that I had all my exercises down pat.   She told me to be faithful to them and keep doing them, which I did.

  The last thing done was x-rays and MRIs  which revealed that the break had knitted and also showed them that several vertebrae had fused somewhere in my life.   Probably from an auto accident several years before I retired which occurred while I was sitting in a line of traffic at a traffic light and was rear ended.    I did spend some time in a cervical collar then.

  So, its been ten years, one month and 6 days since our accident.   I still have bits and pieces of pain in my neck, nothing severe though.   I stil do that one exercise that requires turning my head from right to left as far as I can, looking up and looking down as well. It helps.    I was told to do no work such as painting ceilings or anything that would require me to look up while working.

  That day at Denver Medical Health Center there were three broken necked people brought in,  one died,  one became a paraplegic and this old man.   The cigarette I put out before the accident was the last one I have had and fortunately the urge never has  been  that bad.    Still a whiff of cigarette smoke smells good, but doesn’t start a yen.  

  How lucky could I get ? 

   

   

   

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