I’m Amy Hawkins, and I was paralyzed from a tornado. The tornado [inaudible], and you want to protect your children.
My mom just seen pitch black coming at us, runs over and jumps on top of us. Wasn’t for her, probably wouldn’t really be here.
My T12 and my back was crushed. Two bottom screws are coming undone, and I have been told I have to have back surgery again.
What The Doctors would like to do is fly you out and hook you up with one of the top orthopedic spine surgeons in the United States.
Amy recently underwent extensive spine surgery to alleviate her chronic pain. Our cameras were there.
Today I’m in LA for back surgery, and I hope to come out of it a new woman.
Today we’re going to be fixing Amy’s spine. So we’re gonna redo the screws, make everything tight, and hopefully they’ll rid of Amy’s pain and get her active. There’s always a challenge when you get a previous surgery, because you got to go through the scar tissue and figure out the right plane. Now we’re getting down to the area that seems a problem. Yeah, so here’s the screw, basically, right here. This screw is very loose, so he just came out.
So now we’re gonna use what’s called the tap. You see the threads here, is going to open up the area, so it allows the easier positioning of our screws. I’m gonna need screwing now, so we gotta be careful here. You know, we stay away from the, obviously, the spinal cord. This is the rod we took out on the left side. It looks like, I thought it was a cobalt chrome, but it’s a titanium. We got to use the stronger rods.
So now we’re gonna bend the rod in the appropriate anatomical contour. A little bit more bend right here. So now we clean everything and start laying bone grafts. There we go. I’m gonna putting the last stick here. Now surgery is done. Everything went is great. I think she’s gonna do extremely well, and she’s gonna be very happy.
Just a few weeks out from that surgery, Amy joins us now, along with orthopedic spine surgeon Dr. Hooman Melamed. And Amy, how are you feeling just two weeks out?
I’m feeling great. I don’t have the lower back pain that I used to, and as Dr. Melamed always says, you know, I feel solid now.
[inaudible] pain medications trying to mask this pain?
Correct. The pain that I have right now is from the bruising from the surgery.
That’s not a big surgery. Yeah, Dr. Melamed, I mean, big times. Yeah, you’re right. I mean, what was unique to this case?
Well, you know, the, the situation was with the Amy’s back was that the, I think when the spine just, just screws were not really in the optimum position, and the bone wasn’t healing on top of it, so it was like a very loose environment. So every time she tried to move, and because she can’t use her legs, the spine is the main focal point there, so there was creating a lot of, like, pressure and the pain. It was a lot of loosening her, and the screws were literally just came out because they were not really anchored in bone. And you know, it’s always a challenge when you have to go into a revision operation, especially such a big incision, because you don’t know exactly what you’re getting into.
And obviously this is a situation where you have pain. You don’t want to rush into a back surgery. At baseline, there are estimated to be about 600,000 back surgeries a year, a lot of them for pain. This was a very unique situation. You had one of the top surgeons in the country who knew what he was doing, but anyone confronting a revision operation, proceed with caution.
What are some of your hopes going forward? It’s only two weeks out, but what is your vision of how life is gonna be?
Well, over the past eight years I’ve gotten more and more feeling back, and it’s always been a dream of mine to walk one day. So, you know, first I got to be able to stand on my own.
Mm-hmm.
And then start taking those baby steps.
Well, you have millions of people praying for you, and thank you so much for being here, and we just wish you a speedy recovery. Dr. Melamed, thank you as well.
