Henryk Piotrowski has spent several months at the University Clinical Hospital in the northeastern Polish city of Białystok after suffering a severe neck fracture while working on a garden plot with his wife.
The accident happened on March 30 in Białystok. Piotrowski had been aerating the lawn when he tripped over a cable and fell.
'I hit myself so hard I can’t breathe'
His wife, Marianna, said the injury did not at first appear life-threatening.
"I came out of the garden shed and saw my husband sitting on the swing. I asked him, ‘Are you resting?’ He said, ‘No, I hit myself so hard I can’t breathe,'" she told broadcaster TVN’s Fakty news program.
She helped him into the shed and gave him a painkiller, but he continued to say he felt very unwell.
A neighbor, a retired rheumatologist, advised the family to call an ambulance. Piotrowski had to be carried to the vehicle.
'The head practically separated from the rest of the body'
Doctors later found that he had broken his cervical spine, and his condition was especially dangerous because he has ankylosing spondylitis, a chronic inflammatory disease that can make the spine stiff, fragile and more vulnerable to fractures.
"At the moment of admission, we found that the head had practically separated from the rest of the body," said Dr. Tomasz Łysoń, head of the neurosurgery clinic at the hospital.
"The patient already had weakness in an upper limb, and his neurological condition was deteriorating. We decided to proceed with surgery."
Łysoń said the initial injury damaged the bone. Because Piotrowski moved after the fall, the nerve roots and spinal cord were also affected. Doctors feared paralysis of all four limbs. There was also a risk that he would lose the ability to breathe on his own.
Piotrowski underwent two operations. The first was carried out on April 9 and the second a week later.
During both procedures, doctors used an intraoperative computed tomography scanner, which allows surgeons to see the fractured spine during a procedure.
In the second operation, they also used a surgical robot to help stabilize the spine with more than a dozen screws.
Dr. Urszula Kościuczuk, who heads the hospital’s anesthesiology and intensive care unit, said the patient’s condition was critical after the first operation.
"During surgery, damage to the spinal cord and the risk of ischemia were found,” she said. Ischemia means a dangerous reduction in blood supply. “At the same time, imaging tests also suggested a concussion of the medulla oblongata. These are two important structures of the nervous system that are responsible for vital functions.”
Piotrowski remained in a coma for almost a month. He was gradually woken only after the second operation.
His wife described that period as extremely difficult, saying she would visit him and find him asleep, motionless and unresponsive.
Kościuczuk said doctors’ first assessment was guarded because Piotrowski still had neurological deficits affecting movement in his arms and legs. His condition has since improved sharply. She called the recovery “phenomenal.”
"The result is wonderful," Łysoń said. "First, the patient is alive. Second, the neurological damage with which he came to us is essentially reversing. The patient is standing up and has a strong chance of independence."
Piotrowski remains weak but is expected to continue rehabilitation. He is now waiting for doctors to remove a tracheostomy tube from his windpipe before he is transferred to a rehabilitation ward.
For now, his ambitions are modest. He says he wants to lie in his own bed, use his own bathroom, step out onto his balcony, and eventually return to the garden allotment where the accident happened.
(rt/gs)
Source: tvn24.pl