Tuesday, December 15, 2009 - Spines

The doctor I taught on Sunday is actually a surgeon who specializes in the human spine.

In his office he had a box full of models from patients’ actual spines. Apparently his focus is on a birth defect (of which I’ve forgotten the name) that makes the spine deform as the person grows up. He showed me pictures of patients standing hunchbacked and crooked and told me that he had even performed surgery on one of this type of patient last week.

Apparently what he does is open up the spine and then put in titanium nails and rods to straighten out the spine. Which was a story that made shivers go down my back, but anyway.

I asked him whether the patients felt any pain and he said: ‘No, they are sleeping.’ And I answered that yes, I could understand that they were under sedation while he performed the surgery. But how about afterwards? He answered: ‘The first three months, a little bit uncomfortable.’

Yeah. No kidding. They have titanium rods in their spines now. But anyway, it improves their quality of life.