St. David's Neuroscience and Spine Institute

In January 09, I was diagnosed with a mass in my spinal cord. Up until then I had been a healthy 40 year old. I went and saw Dr. Hummell(who is NOT with Nero Texas, he is with the brackenridge group) first, he spent 15min with me and told me I would most likely lose bladder, bowl, and sexual function and that I would probably be in a wheel chair. He said it was going to be really hard for him to get this out of me. Dr. Hummell told me how embarrassed he would be if he got in there and found out it was MS. His posture was away from me and he wasn't personable at all. I left there wondering if I should just end my life.

After that, I lined up 5 different doctors, Neuro Texas was my next stop. I went in and Dr. Burnett spent and hour with me drawing pictures of my spinal cord, showing me the MRI and discussing the surgery and what I could expect. He told me that if everything went perfectly, I'd be in surgery for 3hrs and that I would WALK out of the hospital in 3 days or so. He did tell me that it was contingent on how things went when he got in there. I was so impressed I cancelled all my other appointments.

I want to emphasize, he spent an hour with me explaining things in a way that I could understand and answering all my questions. I left confident that he would take care of me. He called me the night before surgery and told me to get some sleep, that he had everything ready for me first thing the next morning. He was going to take care of me. I was a basket case having never had any major surgery. The call was nice and more than I expected.

I was in surgery for 3.5 hours. They got all the tumor out and found it to be a level 2 empendymoma. I required no further treatment for the cancer. I was in the hospital for 6 days. mainly because I didn't react well to the pain meds, they made me violently ill. St. Davids did a fantastic job of caring for me.

All of that was 3 mos ago. I was back to work in 4.5 weeks after surgery. I do have some loss of sensation on my left side but should get most of that back in a year. I walked out of the hospital and Dr. Burnett continues to care for me. He's a great doctor and I would highly recommend anybody needing neurological care go see these folks. The office staff makes me feel like I'm part of the family and Dr. Burnett treats me like he's known me for years. That's important because your mind needs healing in this sort of situation just as much as your body does.