Dr. Lynn did me a solid and scheduled my CT scan for December 31st - specifically so I could claim it on my health insurance for 2020 (life pro tip: breaking your neck is a great way to hit your max deductible/out-of-pocket REAL fast). The CT scan was at the hospital in Greer and was a pretty simple in-and-out procedure, with a chance to meet a handful of new hospital employees and explain in enthusiastic detail the specifics of my predicament.
It was then an INCREDIBLY long weekend, both to ring in the new year and attempt to wait patiently until my appointment the following Monday with Dr. Lynn to parse the results.
The results - were good! The CT scan shows total healing of the C1 and C7 fractures (the two lesser of the three breaks). The C2 fracture is still in the process of healing. Where the “pin bone” (odontoid) is knitting itself back to the body of the C2 vertebrae, there is fusion across roughly half of the connector point. Naturally I forgot, in the moment, to snap a picture of the scan to post here, so please enjoy instead this rough sketch by Lindsay, my very capable artist-in-residence.
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| The C2 pin (odontoid) bone, healed partially across |
I get the sense that in a perfect world, at this point, we’d see complete fusion along this junction, but I didn’t feel any overt concern from Dr. Lynn. Sometimes there is slower healing on sections of bone like this, he indicated, and said that in time we should still see complete fusion. We’ll just need to keep looking at it, so we go back the first week of February for another set of x-rays to check on the progress.
But with the amount of bone healing that we do see, said Dr. Lynn - “Yeah let’s get you out of this thing, huh?” Sweeter words I perhaps have never heard, and so we start out the New Year exactly as we hoped - with being freed from the Cage of the Halo Brace!
A slight delay immediately arose, however - we’d have to see Todd the Orthotist for the Halo removal (as only he possessed the magical tools, wrenches, etc required) - and although we called over to his office - Todd had gone home for the day. So the soonest we could get in to see him was Wednesday morning, January 6th. Honestly, this was completely fine with me - After almost four months in the Halo, what was another couple of days? This also gave me the chance on Tuesday to capture some video footage I wanted for a few practical Halo videos I have contemplated making to post to Youtube at some point, as reference videos for other people who might find themselves in my shoes (or brace, in this case) someday.
It also gave me a chance to mentally prepare myself for this next step. Don’t get me wrong - I was eager to get out of the Halo and move forward to the next stage of healing and progression - but at the same time, I can’t say I wasn’t a little nervous about what would come next. After four months in the Halo, it was (believe it not) comfortable. There was no pain, no discomfort - it was bulky, unwieldy, sure - but I had adapted it into my everyday life and I knew what everything felt like and how everything worked. And for an injury as unstable and mentally nerve-wracking as a neck fracture, well - stability and surety goes a long way, both physiologically and psychologically.
Look, it’s not that I ACTUALLY thought that, once Halo-less, my head might fall off and roll away, but all I’m saying is that, were you in my shoes, you might also have weird dreams in which that very sort of thing happens. But, this is real life, and we must move forward with all the courage and mental fortitude we can muster to play the hand we are dealt.
So, Wednesday morning, January 6th, 2021 dawned - Day 119 in the Halo - and to Todd’s office we went. (Per Todd’s advice from several months back, I had saved an oxycodone pill and tipped it back 15 minutes before arriving at his office) The procedure was smooth and simple - here’s a video for those who’d like to watch along.
First Todd secured around my neck the hard Aspen collar that will become my new best friend for the next several weeks/months at least. Then, the rods connecting the “halo” part of the brace to the “vest” part of the brace were removed, one by one. These rods are really what effectively held my head in place - so as each one was removed, I could feel gravity taking control of my head again and could feel myself “sinking down” into the collar. What a terrifically odd feeling, to suddenly have that weight again - I immediately thought of a book I read recently by Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield, describing what the “weight” of gravity feels like at first for astronauts returning from spending any length of time on the International Space Station. Thankfully the collar could do all the work for me while my neck muscles, long dormant, were suddenly forced to wake up and (attempt to) kick back into action.
Once the rods were removed, it was to the halo itself. Todd and his assistant took out two screws at once on opposing sides of my head - the first two created a feeling of “pressure release” - not unlike the pressure I felt when they put the new screws in a couple months back to replace the infected pins in the back. Once those two were removed, they took out the remaining two - the moment when those two pins “released” was by far the most painful part of the process - specifically the screw at the front left side of my head had a distinct moment where it felt as though it were “ripping free” - thankfully a mere handful of moments and this pain began to subside. My head immediately did feel as though it weighed 30 pounds or more, but the Aspen collar provided all the support and stability I needed. We removed the vest portions, bandaged up the pin sites on my forehead, put the Halo remains in a large plastic bag to keep and save for posterity, and home we went.
What a strange, wonderful, and absolutely bizarre sensation to not have the Halo on. It was jarring - not in a displeasing way - just in a discombobulating way. I felt overall as though I weighed 10 pounds lighter, but my head felt as though it weighed 20 pounds more. I felt both much freer - from the Halo - and yet more constrained - by the Aspen collar snug around my neck. But all in all - a net positive, and an absolute win, I decided.
Because of how the C2 vertebrae was only partially healed, Dr. Lynn’s instructions are to wear the Aspen collar more or less full-time for the next month until I see him again. I am allowed to remove it for sleeping and showering, but I get the sense he doesn’t want me to work too hard on any “rehab protocol” until we check things with another x-ray in a month to see how that pin bone is doing. These first few days have been pretty slow and cautious. There is a lot of neck soreness and discomfort, but it seems to be getting marginally better each day. As Dr. Lynn put it “soreness is okay, pain is not” - it definitely feels like everything going on in the neck region is just soreness of a variety of different kinds. The collar keeps me secure and stable - it permits a very very tiny bit of neck movement but so far my goal is to keep things as still as possible. (For that matter, I really CAN'T move my neck very much anyway with how weak the muscles are) So far I have only removed the collar once for a few minutes just to let my neck breathe a little bit - it felt alright, but I’m SUPER tentative about accidentally making any kind of quick or sudden movement that would cause pain. I’m back to sleeping in the recliner for now but within a few more days I’m hoping to try lying flat and maybe even taking the collar off overnight. A lot of the soreness and pressure in the neck now reminds me a lot of the first few weeks in the Halo, so I’m optimistic that as my neck muscles get acclimated to even micro-usage, we’ll see definite improvement over the next few weeks. If I get a little stronger and feel a little better everyday, by the time we see Dr. Lynn on February 1st, I’ll be ready for whatever comes next!
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| Feels great to be Halo-Free! |
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| The (terrifying) moment of truth, taking off the Aspen collar for the first time |
