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.

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.