A Science Guy’s Almanac #19. Year 2. March 7, 2016
A ruptured Spinal Disk and Giant Snowflakes – Part 3
After my physical therapy session/experience with the Wartenberg Wheel, it was obvious that something was terribly wrong with my back. This was long before MRI technology. We’ll get to my experience with the “highest tech” of the day by the end of this post. I’m sure the doctor knew the disk was ruptured, but I never heard that term until just before surgery.
I spent a week in traction in the hospital. During that week, I have only one recollection. It was well after dinner had been served. Dinner is a generous description of what they served back then. I suspect it was nutritious, but I know it was boring. It was also not very much volume for an 18-year-old football player.
One of the orderlies would stop by my room and talk for a bit every evening. This night, he asked, “You want something else to eat?”
“Sure!”
“How about a milkshake? I can get to that machine in the kitchen.”
“Great!”
“It’ll have to be vanilla. That’s the only ice cream flavor they serve here.”
“Not a problem.”
He left. He was gone a long time. When he final returned he was carrying one of the cardboard ice buckets that each room had.
“I couldn’t find any paper cups,” he announced. “So I put your milkshake in this.” He handed me the bucket.
I looked into the bucket. It was, at least, three-quarters full of milkshake. My guess was that there was more than a quart sloshing around. It was yummy.
When I checked out of the hospital, I was instructed to wear the back brace I’d worn during my last six weeks of high school. Here’s what it looked like. I had to search vintage back braces for this. Boy, am I old!
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| Back of back brace. |
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| Front of back brace |
I limped around the UCSD campus from late September through early December. You will remember that my leg had no feeling in the outer half.
One day in October, when it was a Santa Ana, I was wearing shorts. I went into the bookstore annex that was on what was then called 3rd College Campus. I stopped in there periodically because the clerks were nice people… and they sold cans of soda.
As I was checking out, the clerk said, “I don’t know if you realize it or not, but you’ve got a big stain on your leg. Maybe you had a leaky pen in your pants’ pocket.” She pointed to the outside of my left leg.
I looked down. Sure enough, there was a blue-purple blotch. I pulled up my shorts hem. The blotch was an oval. I rubbed it with my finger. Nothing came off. I limped into the bathroom and tried washing it off. That’s when I realized it was a bruise—about four inches wide.
I carried an attaché case with my books and notebooks in it. The case was thick cardboard like material. I usually carried it in my left hand. As I limped the case would smack into my leg with each step. Because I had no feeling in my leg, the bruise continued to be re-bruised daily. That was what finally convinced me that what had happened to my back was bad.
My surgery was scheduled for the last Friday of the UCSD Fall Quarter. I had to take my chemistry final early because it was also scheduled on that day. I vaguely remember checking into the hospital Thursday.
I do remember Thursday afternoon.
I was taken down to the bowels of the hospital. Once there, a technician explained that I was going to have a myelogram. That was the state-of-the-art diagnostic procedure for spinal cord problems.
I knelt down on a table and bent over a big foam pad with my elbows on the table. Three straps were tightened around my legs, upper back, and arms. The technician placed a large-bore needle into my lower back. He explained he was removing the syringe part of from the needle. Then he inserted a second needle into the first needle and injected fluorescent dye into my spinal cord.
Without warning, the table began to rotate and rock up and down. I found out later that was to get the dye spread throughout my back. The dye stained disk material.
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| Imagine the material labeled "Intervertebral disc" spread out in splotch about the size of a bread plate. |
An Aside: The disks between the vertebrae in your back are about the consistency of a baggie filled with smooth peanut butter. During the night, as you are sleeping, the disks plump up since gravity isn’t pushing your vertebrae closer to each other like it does when you are upright. For that reason, measuring your height in the morning might show you as much as 0.5” taller than the same measurement in the late afternoon.
While the table was rocking and rolling, a fluoroscope was showing the dye moving around. The fluoroscope was off to the side. I couldn’t see it.
“Oh, my God!” were the first words I heard from the technician after he’d powered up the fluoroscope. Those were not the words I wanted to hear.
Immediately following the exclamation, the technician sprinted out the door of the room. I’m still hanging by the straps.
The technician returned with a partner. I could hear them talking about centimeters. I managed to get the technician’s attention.
“What’s the matter?” I asked.
“On, nothing really. Well, that’s not quite true.” There was a pause, and then he rotated the bed so I could see part of the fluoroscope screen. What I saw was the new guy holding a ruler against the screen.
“See the brightly lit area?” The technician asked.
“Uh, huh.”
“That’s all material that used to be inside of the disk between your L-5 vertebrae and your sacrum. When your disk ruptured, this stuff went everywhere. We’re measuring because it’s the biggest spread we’ve ever had on the fluoroscope. How’d you rupture it?”
I briefly related the events at Cal Lutheran.
“That would do it,” was his assessment.
As they were preparing to send me back to my room he showed me where he’d attached a piece of adhesive tape to the side of the fluoroscope screen. The date, two sets of initials, and a number were written on the tape in felt marker.
“This stays on the machine until a bigger spread is documented,” he said as I was wheeled out of the room. I have no idea how long I held the record.
Early Friday morning, a nurse came into my room and injected me with a muscle relaxer.
“I normally inject this into your hip, but you’ve got pretty big arms,” she said before she gave me the shot in my arm.
I was wheeled down into the pre-surgical waiting area.
Important to know: Most preloaded “shots” are dosed for a 70Kg patient. 70Kg is about 154 pounds. If you’re bigger than 70Kg, the dose is a bit light. If you’re smaller than 70KG, the dose is a little high. Of course, if you’re too far of the 70Kg mark in either direction, they usually make a custom dose. I don’t know why they didn’t customize my dose. I weighed over 93Kg at the time of the surgery. Still do.
As I lay in the semi-darkness, a couple members of the surgical team were in the early stages of preparation for my surgery. I could overhear them although I know they had not intended on having an audience.
“What time’d you leave the party last night?”
“I don’t know exactly. Probably around 2:00 or 2:30. You?”
“After that.”
“What about the doctor?”
“He was still there when I left.”
At that point, I raised myself up on one elbow and looked in the general direction of the nurses. One of them caught the movement.
“Oh, my. We have a visitor,” one said.
“You must be our patient,” said he the other as a mask was placed over my nose and mouth. “Just breathe naturally and count backward from 100.”
I never found out what time the doctor ended up leaving the party.
You’ll need your snow gear for the next segment.
Next Almanac post: A ruptured Spinal Disk and Giant Snowflakes – Part 4
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