Two Months

It's now two months since I got out of the halo! Time really has flown. By now I've caught up with most of the people who haven't seen me since I got out. I still enjoy doing my party trick of moving my head in all directions. People love that.


I'm finally able to look up without doing an awkward lean back from the waist and now I'm really able to enjoy the art deco light fixture mouldings in this house. I'll take a picture for you some day, they are wild.

Now I would estimate that I've got about 90% of movement back in my neck. It feels like it's come back very quickly, but I am not really trying to hold back. I'm doing my own little physio routine, which involves:
Looking left, looking right, looking up, looking down, tilting head to the right, tilting head to the left (tilting still feels fairly limited, but how often do you use that anyway?), and then going around the world both ways. In the absence of proper physio, I feel like it's been quite effective. But given that it was my thoracic spine that was broken, and not the joints in my neck, regaining movement probably was never going to be as much of an issue for me as for most halo brace patients.

As I have said to many, many people over the past couple of months, I broke my back in the best possible way.
Then they say, "You should buy a lottery ticket!"
And then I do, and then I lose, and figure I've already used up all my luck for the rest of my life on not being paraplegic.


Scars are still present. Not much to say about them. I have continued to rub the stuck one whenever I remember. I think it's improving? Still stuck but seems to have a bit more give to it. People are constantly amazed that the scars are as small as they are. I had a mosquito bite right in the middle of my forehead the other day and one of the nurses at work mixed that up with a halo scar. Ferocious mosquito.

While on the topic of cosmetic changes, my acne and backne are finally clearing up. Looks like I was correct about it returning to normal once I was doing normal things.
Also, I've lost my halo-abs and regained my pre-halo weight. Looks like everybody was correct about it returning to normal once I was doing normal things!

That's regression to the mean, for you.

Got my follow-up appointment at the end of next week where I have my x-ray taken while stretching everything into different positions. Hopefully that will be the end of the doctor visits, and I can start some real exercise again.

High Five!

Five weeks since I lost the halo! It's gone by so fast.

I'm physically back at work now, which is nice. It's still another couple of weeks until I'm allowed to drive. That's not due to any lack of function. It's a legal thing-- insurance doesn't cover you until you're a month out of a neckbrace. Which I didn't know until I mentioned driving to my doctor-- I wonder if he would have even brought it up if I hadn't!

The follow-up appointment was pretty straightforward (apart from the four hour wait we had when they tried to jam every spinal patient in Perth into a single afternoon). I had some xrays shot in me, and all that could really be seen is that everything's in the right place. The doctor had me move my head up and down-- down's really good for me, but up is still pretty stiff.

I have to go back at the beginning of May to have some more x-rays done with the same movements before he'll sign off on physio. I'm not allowed to have any rough massage or physio, because he doesn't want anyone else to try force my neck, but am free to try and move it around under my own steam.

I mentioned last time I thought I had a quarter of my usual range of movement. I think it's now something like 80%. Left and right are almost to where they should be, down is excellent, and up is still stiff but getting better. I feel like I've got pretty good mobility back, but a couple of people have noticed that I do still tend to move with my torso. That might be as much psychological as physical at this point.

Foreheads hella messed up

Scars are looking pretty good! They're a bit pink but mostly covered by hair. The scar on the left has bonded to underlying tissue and I've been rubbing it pretty hard every day to try loosen it up. Not sure if it's actually doing anything, but it makes me feel better to be doing something.

Apparently the dents in my head are here to stay. The doctor said it could be necrosis of fatty tissue due to that raging infection. They feel pretty deep, but the flesh on the skull is actually 5-8mm deep-- plenty of buffer before the brain case. He said it's definitely not the infection having turned my skull into mush. What a relief! I think there's a bit of nerve damage in the area because touching it seems to prickle the top of my skull. The other rear pin site is still a little tender, but otherwise ok. I'm happy that the two most problematic sites to heal are completely hidden by hair.

So that's the state of me! I'll check back in again after the first week of May.