Leland Olson

How I Lived 50+ Years With a Spinal Cord Injury Leland Olson

This book was recently re-edited in March 2020. I wrote this book to share the many things that have happened to my spine. The trouble started with a spinal fracture and dislocation in 1964. My right leg got paralyzed, and I spent three months on a Stryker frame in Rehabilitation. I walked out of that hospital with a cane. Syringomyelia soon started in my spinal cord and continued to hollow it out. I had Paralysis on my left side and was biting my tongue when eating, a spinal shunt was put in the spinal cord at T-3 in 1985. I continued to have more problems breathing and walking, and my balance was terrible. Another shunt was put in at T-5. In the year 2000, extensive work got done in my thoracic and cervical spine for stenosis. Part of a vertebrate was removed and then put back in with a plate. I had a slow recovery after that surgery. In 2016 another shunt was placed in my spine at T-1 to relieve the pressure at the base of my brain. At present, my spinal cord is hollowed out entirely from top to bottom. I can still walk with a walker. In 1985 most doctors had never heard of Syringomyelia. A student doctor happened to be with my neurologist during an examination, she had recently studied about my Rare Disorder. She told the doctor she thought that is what I had. A week later I was having my first spine surgery done at the VA Hospital in Minneapolis. The head of the humerus bone on my left arm dissolved in November of 1985. It became a Charcot Joint from years of paralysis, doctors declined to do an artificial joint for fear it would not heal.