Wounded Warrior Receives Rare Spinal Surgery

I make it no secret that I have a profound affinity for the EOD Community and the men and women who humbly perform this duty. Here’s a great story about a wounded Marine EOD Technician receiving a very risky procedure to alleviate extreme nerve pain as a result of injuries sustained in an IED blast in Afghanistan.

Mark Burleson awoke to unimaginable pain a month after the bomb he had been disarming detonated in his hands.

“My injuries were extensive, to say the least,” said the 31-year-old Marine staff sergeant, who had severe burns, shattered bones and a brain injury from the December 2011 blast in Afghanistan’s Helmand province.

Burleson’s right arm was gone below the elbow; his left arm spared but paralyzed.

“All the nerves were ripped from my spinal cord at the root,” he said, describing the damage that drove waves of pain down the otherwise senseless and limp limb. “It felt like someone was lighting my arm on fire with a cutting torch. And, occasionally, they’d stop and tie anchors to the ends of my fingers to rip out the bones.”

A very vivid description for sure however, Marines aren’t known for their mincing of words.

On July 26, Burleson left Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., for Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, where neurosurgeon Dr. Allan Belzberg agreed to try the high-stakes, high-risk surgery.

“It’s a dangerous operation, so we only use it when we’ve exhausted all other options,” said Belzberg, who performs the procedure three or four times a year.

Using a microscope and a tiny electrode, Belzberg made 140 burns in the damaged nerves dangling from Burleson’s spinal cord; nerves intermixed with healthy connections to his lower limbs.

“If you get it just right, you get rid of the pain,” Belzberg said of the stressful six-hour procedure. “If you’re the slightest bit off, you paralyze his leg.”

Air Force Chief of Staff General Norton Schwartz from this year’s Memorial Ceremony.

Schwartz distilled the essence of an EOD technician, speaking to their vital role and singular qualification. He said that being a technician took “the brains of an engineer, the hands of a surgeon and the courage of a martyr.”

Accurately put and thankfully there are surgeons at Johns Hopkins with the surgical skill and courage to perform such a risky procedure.

Category: Politics