Johann Quisumbing

By JQuisumbing

I came close to DEATH at least twice in my lifetime. Now, I am not counting the time when I almost fell off a building; or when I foolishly rode my trike down a dangerous winding mountain road, imagining that I may fly off a cliff; or when I almost missed being crushed by a toppling construction scaffolding. I won’t even mention when I was shipwrecked twice, almost bitten by a rattlesnake, and overdosed by an overzealous sibling. Those and a few other things I did were just close calls. The first time was when I was only a baby. 

It was back in 1958, during my very first birthday party, as a matter of fact, I (& my sister) contracted poliovirus¹. Normally, I was an active infant. It was said that I was up on my feet when I was around 5 months old. My Mom told me that our nanny would chase after me all the time.  It was when she noticed that I (& my sister) were uncharacteristically still that she went to look into us. She found us lying in our respective cribs with extreme high fever. You can understand my parent’s trepidation when the doctors told them, “It is polio!” According to my Dad, I was literally at death’s door. I was in critical condition. The doctors said that my lungs were filling with liquid leaving only less than a third of one lung free. If all my lungs filled, my parents would be left with only six children. 

The second time I faced death happened when I was 58. If you recall in part 3, the spinal cord in my neck was dangerously being compressed. My wife, who is a doctor as well, later described that my spinal cord was reduced to hairline strands of tissues, barely keeping me alive. If it was not arrested, what would have killed me, well ironically, would have been my lungs totally giving out.

If there was a relevant question to be asked, right about now, it would be ‘Why is this happening to me?’ Well, do you recall this?

“This happened so the power of God could be seen in me.” _{John 9:3}

In my last posting, I mentioned that my experiences paralleled the ‘mud pie’ miracle of the blind young man in John 9. Compared to Jesus’ other healings of blind men, this was most unusual. Well, my ‘mud pie’ miracle came in the form of some special people. When I was a baby, that would be my Dad. But I’ll reserve that story for Part 5. For now, though, let us jump to 2015…

I have been in the hospital for 4 days, when I first met the doctor who I dubbed as the MacGyver of spinal medicine. MacGyver was a character of a TV series back in the 90s. He would come to aid people in danger with his unique and somewhat unorthodox problem-solving skills. The doctor, who was an orthopedic spinal surgeon, explained that because my spine was so extremely compressed, he was hesitant to take on my case. But to do nothing meant a certain death sentence for me. So, he laid out his radical plan to me, my wife and a few relatives who were visiting me. I asked them to stay as a sounding board. As the doctor explained in detail on how he was going to proceed, my wife’s hand clenched tighter into mine. Looking up into her teary eyed face, I got the sense of how risky the operations were going to be. Yup, there will be 2 major procedures and he was confident that he will get it done. Others thought him too prideful, but I could not help seeing him as God-sent. I had no fear. In fact, I was actually excited. 

I was rolled into the operating room on the same week of Halloween. Just as I was going under, I played back in my mind, step by step, on how the surgeon was going to extract the calcified material that was lodged against the riskiest part of my cervical spine. The traditional practice for relieving compression is to go in through the back of the neck but there were dangerous complications in my case because the calcified material practically surrounded my spine. That was the reason why most other doctors would not have taken my case. Thank the good Lord, for this surgeon, because he was inspired to go through the front door, so to speak. He sliced open the front of my neck (this was where the radical part came in), then he literally removed the C4 bony segment of my cervical spine. Afterwhich, he and another doctor carefully scraped off the hardened material that was pinching the frontal section of the cord. From there, they shored up the missing bony segment with a titanium cage and a screwed-on plate. Check out the X-ray image below. [By the way, the bone will grow back encompassing the cage.]

The operation took about 15 hours or so. Though the doctors were optimistic, the verdict for a successful outcome was still in question. My wife and the primary neuro doctor (not the one who did the cutting) stayed by my bedside at the ICU practically the whole night waiting for signs. Those signs came in the morning when after some poking, I indicated to them that not only did I feel it but I wiggled my toes. You can well imagine the audible sigh of relief in that room.

Around Thanksgiving², I underwent 2 more operations. The second one was not exactly in the original plan, but I’ll talk about it another time. In the third procedure (which was supposed to be the second one, haha), the surgeons cut open the back of my neck and proceeded to correct the rest of the compression. After which, the doctors added more implants. I actually woke up for a short period of time and felt the drilling of one of the titanium screws. Fortunately, the anesthesiologist was on the ball and I was back in dreamland. When I came out of recovery, they told me everything went well. 

Now, came the healing process. Originally, I expected more pain and hardship from the wounds on both the front & back of my neck. Boy, was I wrong!

TO BE CONTINUED

Footnotes:

1. Poliomyelitis – a highly infectious disease that mostly affects children under the age of 5. The virus was spread person to person and attacked the nervous system, and in some instances, it either led to paralysis and/or death; 

2. An annual American holiday held on the third Thursday of November.

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