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Emily's Fine
Back of spinal Column
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Story about "Emily's Fine"
My daughter, Emily, a Junior at Boston University, one June
night decided
to climb a tree. Having grown up in the desert
with no big trees, her mother
had never told her not to.
She fell, hitting the sidewalk and passing out. When she awoke,
she said to
herself, "I am going to walk". She got up and her
friends took her inside
and changed her clothes and then took
her to the emergency room. She walked
in after a bumpy ride
over Boston's streets. As soon as the nurses heard
what had
happened they put a cervical collar on her and strapped her to
a
board. She had fractured her C-5 vertebrae in three places.
She called us
from the ER at midnight. It took us all night and
many calls to her and to
airlines to get us out of Arizona and
on our way to Boston. When we arrived,
not knowing if she
would live or be paralyzed, they were just
rolling her out of surgery.
She smiled and was fine. They had removed C-5
and replaced it
with a cadaver vertebrae and then put a titanium
plate and 4
screws on C-4 and C-6. Emily is fine..
Her grandfather, my father, had the same break and was a
quadriplegic for the last 25 years of his life.
Angels were watching over her and us.
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Base of spinal column (detail)