Dr. Lee was the neurologist on call, and He is ranked one of the best spinal cord surgeons in Las Vegas, thank goodness! Dr. Lee performed the surgery exactly as planned. No complications, no surprises. A cage was placed where T5 used to be and two rods and 4 screw on each side were placed to repair his damaged spine. They also did a bone graft from his hip to help fuse things together. Because he had to be placed on his stomach for the entire surgery, they placed a chest tube in for precaution. A pic line was placed in his neck :( and of course a catheter and breathing tube :((( The surgery took 4 1/2 LONG hrs. The other, less concerning thing that happened, was when he crashed, his helmet was shoved into his goggles, which gave him a little road rash on the forehead, nose, and cheeks. It also gave him two black eyes. You can see in the pictures how fast they swelled up even before surgery! After being on his face for the duration of the surgery, it caused a lot of blood to pool in his eyeballs along with even more swelling, making his eyes look THE worst of all! Between the right eye and the pic line on the right side of his neck, I really had a hard time not passing out! Haha.
Right after surgery
After breathing tube removed
Side view of pic line and gross eye
Wow, that is scary. My friend was just in a motorcycle accident and got pretty bad road rash. He was sending me out to get icecream and Duoderms all the time. I am glad his surgery was a success and I hope he is feeling much better these days. That eye really is scary, poor guy!
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