When Alex
Parker fell from the roof of a house, fracturing his back and badly injuring
two discs in his neck, it would have been reasonable to assume that, at the
very least, his days of sporting adventures were over.
But the
lifelong sports fan is now back to full fitness and preparing to walk to the
North Pole to raise £250,000 for charity. This follows a successful climb to
the summit of Kilimanjaro last year as well as a London to Paris cycle ride!
And, as he
completed another gruelling training session in preparation for his icy
adventure, Alex,talked of Birmingham-based neurosurgeon Andre Jackowski, whose
skill and expertise he says “made everything possible”.
Alex, managing
director of Leicester Company AMP Electrical Distributors, lost his memory in
the accident and can remember little about the fall, which happened two years
ago. When he came out of hospital after treatment for his neck injury and
fractured back he was forced to take painkillers on an almost constant basis.
Then, while
on a recuperation holiday cruise to Miami, Alex, who was coverd by Private
Medical Insurance, found himself in excruciating pain and
unable to move his arms as fragments of the discs that had been injured during
the fall pressed on his spinal cord.
He spent the
entire cruise under sedation and, on his return home, began his search for an
operation that could end his agony and give him back the full use of his arms.
That is when
he met Consultant Neurosurgeon Andre Jackowski at BMI Priory Hospital in
Birmingham. Recently named in The Times
Top Fifty British surgeons list, Mr Jackowski is one of the few people in
Britain to carry out the procedure of anterolateral foraminotomy - a microsurgical procedure where the surgeon
enters through the front of the neck to reach the damaged area at the back.
This meant
he could remove the trapped fragments while preserving the remaining discs
thereby avoiding a painful bone graft or the need for artificial disc implants.
Private hospital news : 6 February 2012
