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| Neurosurgery is really fine carpentry. As I found out, a neurosurgeon is really precise, but uses the same tools as a carpenter. I had an Anterior Cervical Discectomy-- this means they went in through the front of my neck and took a disc out of my spine at the C6-C7 level. They replaced the disc with a bone from a cadaver and then put a titanium plate over the two vertebrae to hold them in place. Here's the evidence. Here they have opened me up, placed some metal studs in the spine to help hold it apart, and are pulling out the herniated disc. They are using some little grabber tool to take pieces out, bit by bit. |
| In the bottom of the hole is a bright white area-- that's my spinal cord! Wow! |
| Then they grab a grinding wheel and start the process of creating a space for the bone to fuse. They created a little shelf for the spacer to sit on when they place it in the hole. This grinder looked like a weed-whacker spinning around in there. |
| Is that all it takes? Here is a ruler to measure how big the spacer needs to be. |
| This is the bone they placed in me. Up until recently, surgeons took a piece of bone from your hip, now they use bone from a cadaver. In and out... measure it, then grind it down to fit, finally I think we have it... |
| Testing the fit...not quite yet. |
| That looks close! Let's shove it in! |
| Looks like a milkbone now...the bone the ground out with the weed-whacker was saved and placed in the void of the cadaver bone to provide some of my own parts to help promote a solid fuse! |
| It's time to put it in there! |
| A few whacks of the hammer, and the bone spacer was in place. After this, a titanium plate was placed across the vertebrae to help stabilize while fusing occur. They attached it with the screws placed in there to hold the vertebrae apart. |
