Neck Surgeon Happy

First post operation outpatient appointment yesterday with my neck surgeon Mr Ansar at the Royal Preston Hospital.   He will keep me under review for two years and yesterday ordered a neck x-ray.   I shall try to get a copy to satisfy the curious (me included).

He showed me the post-op x-ray on his screen - lots of metalwork but very neat indeed.   He secured a metal hook to the topmost vertebra, the Axis or Cervical 1 - not to the base of the skull.   That left the Axis vertebra to do its job of enabling the skull to rotate on it so I have a good deal of head movement now - and increasingly so.

There was essentially nothing left of C2 below so wires connect C1 to C3 and 4 which are plated together.   Clever, delicate and life saving stuff.   He was at pains to convey to me that I had been 'very seriously injured indeed'.

I shook his hand warmly and shall see him again in three months.

With all her visits to see me at the Royal Preston Pat knew her way around.   She pointed out to me the Emergency entrance where I had arrived at the dead of night on April 10/11.   I don't remember a thing but perhaps its design explains my recent obsession with parasols!