The Surgery

Off to Surgery! 

Brian had to have surgery on his spine in order to correct the pinching of the spinal cord and to keep his vertebrae aligned. His surgeon was doctor Lee. A very kind man with an oriental accent who told us. “No more go fast on bike.” He used screws to fuse C3 to C2 and C1 which were already fused from prior damage. Dr. Lee told us he could see lots of old damage in Brian’s spine.

 It was just past noon when they took him out of ICU and up one floor to the surgery suite. The ICU nurse let us know where we could wait and that they would give us updates. We let her know that we were going to go get something to eat and then come back to the waiting room. Jean and I went out to find food and settled on Arby’s. After lunch we searched for a hot drink for Jean. It was pouring down rain and Dunkin’ was out of Hot Chocolate. We returned to the hospital after successfully finding hot chocolate at the McDonalds drive through after a very long wait. Turns out the wait for the hot chocolate seemed long but was very short in comparison to the wait ahead of us. We returned to the waiting room at the hospital outside the surgery suite. We waited and we waited and we watched the rain streak down the windows and we waited and watched a stand up comedian on my iPad. We then saw something that gave us both immense hope. The custodian. He was not just any custodian, he was just what we needed to see. He was in a wheel chair and he had no legs. He sailed past us so fast with a dust broom maneuvering that chair with such speed and grace a huge dust broom in hand performed a 180 degree turn at the end of the hall and whizzed passed us again. We just said wow! Jean told me to take a photo of him and I said “No way!” I’m not about to just take a photo of a random person just doing their job living their life! Finally I grew tired of waiting and Jean was just as impatient and tired so I went up to the surgery doors and knocked on them asking for an update. The surgery had not started until 2:00 they had lots to prepare before starting. They said it may go until 5:30 which was 2 more hours at this point. So more waiting but we were thirsty again at this point so a kind member of the hospital staff helped us find a vending machine that actually had stuff in it! $4 later we had 2 sodas and we were almost content to wait some more… Finally Dr. Lee came out and talked to us for about an hour about Brian’s condition and we gave him an education about Bicycle racing, Brian, will power, and the dangers of being a Bicycle racer on the velodrome and on the road. He said he sees lots of bike accidents but mostly bike with car. We discussed bike handling skills and the fact that they were sometimes obtained by riding around in circles trying to knock each other off for fun. A game the Junior boys used to call Death Cycle. He got quite the education about bike racing and Brian’s life and passion this day. Jean and I were sure he thought us crazy! He told us that Brian may be walking in 2 months of rehab and the surgery had gone well. He showed us the MRI pictures on his phone. He showed us were the damage was. Showed us both the old damage and the new. Brian can take the collar off and that he had fixed the problem. We went back down to see Brian in ICU and once we were convinced he was content (maybe all drugged up and feeling no pain) we drove the hour back to my house.