Friday, January 7, 2011

CT-Scan of my M6-L, 2-months Post-op

Boy this is awesome. My brother is dating a girl who's parents own an diagnostics & imaging center in my city. I got the hook up and got the royal treatment is selecting any time of scan I wanted. I told them I wanted plain x-rays of flexion and extension of my M6-L Artificial Disc, but they had no idea what I was talking about so they just put me though a CT-Scan. Right out of the scan they let me sit down and see the results... AMAZING VIEWS OF THE DISC. I got back a CD and compiled 20 images of a 3D scan and plugged them into iMovie on my mac, then to youtube, to create this transitional 3D-view of my M6-L (seen in red in this video):


Pause the video at any time to look at the image in more detail. But for a bigger video and more detailed view, go here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aD01rBLh_og

Those horizontal protrusions coming from the M6-L are just distortions in the imaging.. the titanium is so strong under the x-rays that it distorts the fields around it. You can see the distortions in the first image below, and the 3d-ized in the still images from the video.

I needed plain old x-rays to see the disc up close and see the bond with the bone, but i'll probably get those with Dr. Zigler in Dallas in the coming weeks. I'm sending this CT-scan to Mr. Boeree.. lets see what he says!

Here are more images from the scan (click on them to make them bigger):




And the still images from the video (click on them to make them bigger):



















I never thought i'd see my disc this way. It looks like placement is optimal and the vertebrae are maintaining their structure really well (no osteophytes.. for some reason I've always feared these, even in my dreams! even though they are never mentioned in any ADR material i've ever read).

I also went ahead and got an MRI of my shoulder since it was bothering me.. they found some problems, but not too serious and they said it won't require any surgery. Looks like that's my next 'medical endeavour'.

Good luck to everyone. I'll keep you posted on any updates!