Back from Mayo and perplexed again
Posted: Thu Nov 30, 2006 11:33 pm
Hi,
Briefly, our then 17-year-old son Eric crashed his bicycle going 70+ km/hr at the World Junior Road Championships in Belgium this past August. We think he hit a guardrail. Open fracture of the clavicle that was surgically repaired and then discovered he couldn't move his arm. Came home and got to work on getting help. As the Canadian health care system is way overburdened and wait times are beyond belief, we also started looking in the US.
We just got back from our first visit to the amazing Mayo trio. A bonus for us, the first person we saw was not one of them, but a Fellow who had done her med school here in Calgary, and in the same class as Eric's referring doctor! As I write about orthopedic ressearch here, we were also able to chat about those docs too. So it kind of warmed things up.
Eventually there were eight or nine people in a room that comfortably holds three! They were all sooooo thorough, we were really impressed. Then Dr. Bishop began, "A month ago, we would have agreed with your surgeon in Calgary (the best BPI doc in Canada), but now we are seeing some slight signals in a couple of the muscles, including the biceps so we'd like to wait another 5 weeks..."
They do not believe there is an avulsion, which is good news, but there are still certain muscles that show no innervation, the deltoid being the most critical. So we know there is surgery no matter what. It would just be nice if we didn't have to worry about the biceps.
Anyway, they aren;t sure whether the regeneration be enough to avoid surgery and want to wait to measure any improvement, since, as we all know, the docs much prefer nerves to heal on their own.
Then, the other difference is that they prefer to do a nerve transfer from the triceps, whereas our NS here wants to preserfve the triceps for cycling and would do a nerve graft from the leg.
We came home not sure what to do next - call the surgeon here, or just go with Mayo. Fortunately or not, that decision was taken out of our hand, since in their incredibly speedy and efficient way, they had already faxed all the reports to him! As they know one another this may be a good thing.
For us it's a tough call, assuming that our NS here agrees with them. Do we stay in Canada and save ourselves $70,000 and have surgery by the best Canadian, who does about 15 a year, or do we say, "Oh to heck with the new Jaguar let's go to the Mayo where they do probably close to 100 per year?" I'm kidding about the Jag, although Eric did say, "I'll stay in Calgary and you can buy me a Porsche". Oh those 18-year-olds!
In the meantime, we have made a date for 6 weeks hence at the Mayo for EMGs and clinical follow-up and we are waiting to hear from our NS here. It will not be an easy decision, but we are very fortunate that we have such excellent options.
If anyone has questions I'll be happy to respond.
Briefly, our then 17-year-old son Eric crashed his bicycle going 70+ km/hr at the World Junior Road Championships in Belgium this past August. We think he hit a guardrail. Open fracture of the clavicle that was surgically repaired and then discovered he couldn't move his arm. Came home and got to work on getting help. As the Canadian health care system is way overburdened and wait times are beyond belief, we also started looking in the US.
We just got back from our first visit to the amazing Mayo trio. A bonus for us, the first person we saw was not one of them, but a Fellow who had done her med school here in Calgary, and in the same class as Eric's referring doctor! As I write about orthopedic ressearch here, we were also able to chat about those docs too. So it kind of warmed things up.
Eventually there were eight or nine people in a room that comfortably holds three! They were all sooooo thorough, we were really impressed. Then Dr. Bishop began, "A month ago, we would have agreed with your surgeon in Calgary (the best BPI doc in Canada), but now we are seeing some slight signals in a couple of the muscles, including the biceps so we'd like to wait another 5 weeks..."
They do not believe there is an avulsion, which is good news, but there are still certain muscles that show no innervation, the deltoid being the most critical. So we know there is surgery no matter what. It would just be nice if we didn't have to worry about the biceps.
Anyway, they aren;t sure whether the regeneration be enough to avoid surgery and want to wait to measure any improvement, since, as we all know, the docs much prefer nerves to heal on their own.
Then, the other difference is that they prefer to do a nerve transfer from the triceps, whereas our NS here wants to preserfve the triceps for cycling and would do a nerve graft from the leg.
We came home not sure what to do next - call the surgeon here, or just go with Mayo. Fortunately or not, that decision was taken out of our hand, since in their incredibly speedy and efficient way, they had already faxed all the reports to him! As they know one another this may be a good thing.
For us it's a tough call, assuming that our NS here agrees with them. Do we stay in Canada and save ourselves $70,000 and have surgery by the best Canadian, who does about 15 a year, or do we say, "Oh to heck with the new Jaguar let's go to the Mayo where they do probably close to 100 per year?" I'm kidding about the Jag, although Eric did say, "I'll stay in Calgary and you can buy me a Porsche". Oh those 18-year-olds!
In the meantime, we have made a date for 6 weeks hence at the Mayo for EMGs and clinical follow-up and we are waiting to hear from our NS here. It will not be an easy decision, but we are very fortunate that we have such excellent options.
If anyone has questions I'll be happy to respond.