Go Deep Inside The Spine Of Peyton Manning
Let Go Deep Inside The Spine Of Peyton Manning
Drew Magary’s Thursday Afternoon NFL Dick Joke Jamboroo runs every Thursday during the NFL season. Buy Drew’s new book, The Postmortal, through here.
I have had my spine operated on three times in my lifetime. Colts QB Peyton Manning also just had his third spinal surgery, destroying his team’s chances of looking like a functional outfit in the process. Our spinal injuries aren’t in the same place. My problem is in my lower back. Manning’s is in his lower neck. But the lasting effects of our injuries are similar. And while Manning will almost certainly be able to play football again, and play it well, his neck is never going to be the same for as long as he lives, and this is why.
According to the Spine Foundation, there are over 65 million Americans who suffer from back or neck pain, and the source of that pain usually comes from a herniated disc. The disc acts as a cushion between each of your vertebrae. Sometimes, the disc will burst open and the tissue inside will leak out, protruding and pressing against the nerve. If you have a herniation in your lower back, that means you get pain radiating down your leg, so in fact the majority of your back pain is actually leg pain (sciatica). Severe herniations can even cause you to lose control of your bowels and/or bladder function, which is FUN! If you have a herniation in your neck (as Peyton did), that www.official49ersnflproshop.com/Nike-Steve-Johnson-Jersey.html means you get corresponding pain radiating down your arm.
In fact, you get more than pain. While radiating pain is every bit as shitty as you think it is, it can often be accompanied by stinging, tingling, numbness, and most important, weakness. That last one is the big one. One time, I walked into a doctor’s office complaining about leg pain and the doctor asked me to walk on my heels. I gave it my best shot, but my right foot absolutely refused to go up. The nerve had been deadened, a condition known as dropfoot, which would make for a good name for a terrible band. And dropfoot, people, is fucking TERRIFYING. Because you’re essentially paralyzed in that respect. No, it’s not the bad kind of paralysis, where you’re Christopher Reeve and someone is changing your bedpan until the day you die. Still, it’s extremely alarming when you know that there are muscles in your body that steadfastly refuse to function. It’s not that you can’t lift your foot, it’s that you can’t even TRY to lift your foot. There’s only the idea of lifting it. The nerve signals from your brain don’t reach the muscle at all. Even official49ersnflproshop.com/Nike-Anquan-Boldin-Jersey.html today, with relatively few current back pain problems (knock on wood), I still occasionally walk around on my heels, just to make sure everything works.
Spine specialists test you for weakness when they think you might have compromised nerves. In addition to the heel walk, they’ll hold your foot up and have you press down, and vice versa. Or they’ll press against your leg and have you kick out, and vice versa. For neck injuries, there are similar tests they do on your arms and hands to make sure they have full movement. If you have just pain but still have full strength, they likely won’t operate on you. It’s when you’re weak, when your functional movement is compromised, that they go ahead and cut you open.
Which is what they did for Peyton. Reports were that Peyton hard a hard time throwing the ball, because the rupture in his neck had deadened the nerve in his arm. So his strength was gone. I was warned by one doctor that, left unattended, deadened nerves risk permanent damage. That’s why you go under the knife: to get your strength back (after surgery, it can return quickly; at least, mine did). Once it comes back, you’re free to go out and throw as many TD passes to Dallas Clark as you like.
Manning had what’s known as fusion surgery. Unlike my surgery, in which the offending piece of disc is removed and the rest of the cushion is left intact (Steelers LB James Harrison had this done in Colin Kaepernick Jersey the offseason), a fusion surgery takes out most of the offending disk and welds the two vertebrae in place. A friend of mine had this surgery. They go through the front of your neck, which is fucking horrifying. The good thing about taking out most of the disc is that it reduces the chances of more disc material spilling out and ruining your shit all over again. The bad news is that once the disc is gone, it’s gone, as is the some of the flexibility that came with it. A ruptured disc, no matter how it’s treated, STAYS ruptured. You can’t stitch it back up. You can’t stuff all the goo back inside. There are artificial spinal discs out on the market, but most reputable spine doctors don’t like them.
Once the disc gets blown, it stays blown. And that can have a lasting impact on the discs above Colin Kaepernick Womens Jersey and below it. If you’re like me, you’re susceptible to having any disc deteriorate at any time. When I asked my doctor if I’d ever have to get operated on again, he told me, “Life is a degenerative process,” which is the single most depressing goddamn thing I’ve ever heard anyone say. Peyton Manning will be back. But his degenerative process has begun. And while I like ribbing the guy as much as anyone, it blows. It blows that he’s not around to play this year, and it blows even more that he’ll probably be dealing with this shit for the rest of his time on Earth. Life is a degenerative process. I can only hope it doesn’t degenerate as fast as the Colts did in Week 1, because that wouldn’t be good.
The Games
All games in the Jamboroo are evaluated for sheer watchability on a scale of 1 to 5 Throwgasms.
Eagles at Falcons: How many people in the stands on Sunday Night will be wearing a Vick Falcons jersey? Sixty thousand? I’d wager 80% of that crowd will scream out in ecstasy when Vick takes the field and boo the shit out of Matt Ryan. And you know why? Because people in Atlanta are REVERSE RAYCESS.
Chargers at Patriots I watched the Chargers play the Vikings last week and Ron Pitts and Jim Mora were the commentators and, at one point, they cut to booth so that Mora could show Pitts some kind of defensive line technique or something like that. Listen, FOX people. The whole reason I skip retarded NFL pregame shows is specifically because you have your dumbfuck analysts piss around on a piece of studio Astroturf so they can feel, for ten seconds, like they have a career again. The rest of us don’t give a shit. Never cut to the booth for that NaVorro Bowman Jersey kind of thing again. In fact, never cut to video of the booth ever for any reason. I don’t want to be exposed to Cris Collinsworth’s old man hands or anything creepy like that.
Bears at Saints: I know it ultimately ended in failure, but Drew Brees’ two minute drill at the end of the Packers game was pretty much the most badass drive I’ve ever seen a QB run. There was 1:08 left on the clock, and Brees took the Saints from their 20 yard line all the way to the Packers’ 9 before spiking the ball. Three of those initial passes were to the middle of the field, which meant that Brees then had to get everyone in position to snap the ball immediately, and then had to run a successful play. He did that three times in a row before spiking the ball to stop the clock. Do you know how fucking hard that is? If it was Donovan McNabb running that drill, they would have gotten off two snaps and the game would have ended. Brees got off five straight passes with no timeouts left before he felt compelled to stop the clock. If Sean Payton had left the ball in Brees’ hands on that final play and let him win the game, you’d be watching highlights of that shit thirty years from now. Just an unreal sequence. I could watch a loop of that all day, preferably while eating ham.
Raiders at Bills: Ryan Fitzpatrick is still ALIVE WITH PLEASURE. Oh my God! He went to HARVARD! He must jizz calculus proofs! I bet I’m just one degree of separation away from knowing him! Hooray for hard working white people! I BET HE LIKES GOOD WINE.
Cardinals at Redskins: I will never get tired of dropping my kid off at the school bus to go to kindergarten. It’s like magic. You put them on the bus, they disappear for seven hours, then PRESTO! They’re delivered right back to you in the same spot. It’s a goddamn miracle. My kid could come back with a fucking black eye and I’d still be ecstatic about the process. Thank you, magical child removal device! YOU TRULY ARE THE BUS OF KINGS.
Panthers at Packers: Oh sure, Cam Newton. You were impressive against a shitty team like Arizona. But let’s see you do the same thing against a REAL team!
(watches Cam do it against a real team)
Oh, wow. Guess I’ll go eat a bag of shit now.
I felt awful about it. Later in the week, I saw a picture of that one guy kneeling at the memorial where his son’s name was engraved. That did the trick. Holy shit, did I cry.
Bucs at Vikings: Speaking of 9/11, whenever they showed players and military people holding onto the field sized American flags last week, I kept hoping everyone holding the flag would lift it up so a dozen three year olds could go running under it, like a parachute in a baby gym class. There had to have been at least one toddler in the stands who had to be restrained from running out there and acting like it was a birthday party.
Chiefs at Lions: The fuck is with those Affleck voiceovers in the Madden ads? Why does he use a Quinzee accent? And why is he using it over footage of an Eagles fan? Is this just how it’s gonna be now, with every Boston fuckface allowed to colonize every goddamn facet of the media? You know what, EA? FACK YOU. The rest NaVorro Bowman Kids Jersey of the world is tired of this bullshit. The Earth does not revolve around that fucking city.
Ravens at Titans
Texans at Dolphins
Seahawks at Steelers
Browns at Colts: I wonder if anyone has ever tried to bake a shit. Like, if you made a bowl full of cake batter, then added a piece of human feces, and the baked it, what would happen? Would it ruin the entire house? Or would the smell not hit until your cake knife hit the molten poopy center? If someone who lives in a frat house could research the answer for me, I’d be grateful. Also, this game is terrible.