Joseph Grossman

In April of 2014, I was 46 years old. I was in the best physical condition of my life. I was training for my second degree black belt in Karate and, barring any unforeseen circumstances, was expecting to receive my new belt at a formal ceremony/Karate demonstration in December of 2014. What was going to make it extra special was that my 12-year-old daughter was, at the same time, going to be awarded her first degree black belt and my 15-year-old son, who had gotten his second degree black belt the previous year, was going to be participating in the ceremony doing various demonstrations.

Everything came crashing down on April 26, 2014, when I suddenly developed excruciating low back pain, seemingly out of nowhere. I spent the next 10 days in such severe pain that I couldn’t even stand up. My family doctor told me to go to the hospital and not to leave until they did an MRI. The hospital refused, saying that my clinical presentation did not warrant an MRI. My family doctor called the ER doctor and pleaded with him to do the MRI, to no avail. They put me on morphine and sent me home. I live in Canada, where the wait times for MRIs may be months unless ordered through an ER.

A couple of days later, my family doctor, through a connection, was able to get me into a radiology lab for the MRI and was told after it was done that I needed to immediately get to the hospital (a different one) because the MRI showed “masses up and down (my) spine”. I remember getting to the hospital. My next memory is waking up in the ICU four days later with a neck collar on and hallucinating. After the IV morphine that had been causing my hallucinations was discontinued, I was told a shocking story. I was told that I had had a spinal epidural abscess caused by a Staphylococcus Aureus infection that I had somehow contracted.

I was told that shortly after arriving at the hospital, I had become incoherent and had developed sepsis. My wife had been told that she should bring my children to the hospital as soon as possible because I might not survive the spinal surgery, which I urgently needed to have. She was told that even if I did survive, there was a high risk that I would awaken from the surgery a quadriplegic. On May 7, 2014, the day after my 47th, birthday, a young, brilliant neurosurgeon performed a multi-level spinal laminectomy from T12-S1, removed the abscess and saved my life.

In addition to the large spinal epidural abscess, a full body MRI done prior to the surgery also showed a non-contiguous mass behind my trachea, which was suspicious for an abscess. Because of that, the surgery actually consisted of two parts – the 7-hour laminectomy, followed immediately by a thoracic surgeon performing a 7-hour mediastinal exploration, which ultimately could not locate anything amenable to an evacuation. Rather, a drainage tube was simply attached to my throat with the hope that the mass would drain. Upon discharge from the hospital where I was admitted for just under three weeks, I had a Pic Line inserted which infused cloxacillin at two-hour intervals six times a day for two months. Following that, I took oral cloxacillin for a further six weeks.

By some miracle, I was neurologically intact following the surgery and although I had to walk with a cane for the first month or so following my discharge home, I went through an intense physiotherapy program and eventually regained all of my functional abilities. I developed some post-infectious joint pains later on in the summer related to the original infection and although joint pain is not the neurosurgeon’s area of specialty, he went far beyond what I would have expected of him and arranged numerous consultations and tests until the symptoms resolved.

A couple of months after the surgery, I returned to my Karate training. Although I was not certain if I would ever be able to perform Karate again, I was able to regain my strength and form over the next few months. If that wasn’t miracle enough, I was able to pick up where I had left off with my training and was awarded my new black belt exactly on schedule. Although months earlier I would not have thought it possible, I was able to participate fully with my children in the black belt ceremony in December. I’m now working hard training for my third degree black belt!

I do have occasional memory lapses, but whether they are due to the sepsis or merely a function of getting older, I do not know. Fortunately, they are not serious enough that they cause any significant interference with my life. Other than that, and other than some occasional minor low back stiffness, I’ve achieved essentially a full recovery. I am definitely one of the lucky ones.