Jon Bills Update
Great to hear that surgery went well. you are in our thoughts Jon.
Hope he makes a full recovery
...if accurate. I'm sure Jon faces some pretty intense rehab and it's great to know he's got the UMHS for that and Barwis and company for the post-rehab.
Co-signed on what is the most important thing on this very interesting day.
Raback knows what he's talking about here.
I don't ever doubt the power of a positive thinking MGoBlogosphere.
This makes up for ending last night on a down note. Here's to as full a recovery as possible.
If I was a bachelor I would be an MGoBlog addict. With the wife and kid gone right now, I can't get enough of the intelligent conversation. Need sleep though.
Best wishes to Jon. I hope that the images and triumphs of Brock Mealer will help keep his spirits high during this trying ordeal. I wish him a speedy recovery!
That's great news.
I'd take his full recovery over a Rose Bowl victory any day.
Can we have both?
Cosign.
Not to minimize by any means, but as a person who works extensively in spine surgery, breaking a vertebre is not nearly the horribleness it sounds like. As long as there's no spinal cord / nerve root damage, he should be fine. Decompress the fracture, throw in a cage, a few screws and some rods, and you're good to go. You're not likely or advised to play a full contact sport like FBS football afterwards of course. Literally thousands of people a day have their spines surgically stabilized. The spine guys at UM are incredible, he's in good hands.
There's a huge difference between a fractured vertebra and a spinal cord lesion. You can absolutely destroy a vertebra without impacting the spinal cord significantly. It just needs to be cleaned, cemented, and instrumented so there is no future damage to the cord.
Now, if he had a piece of vertebra which was sticking into the cord, this is another matter.
Of if he had central cord syndrome, could have been a bad sign (not necessarily as CCS can resolve by itself. It's just bruising of the cord and loss of upper function while retaining lower function) but fortunately, a broken vertebra is not necessarily something that is life altering.