“BZZZ. BZZZ. BZZZ. BZ…” My hand came down on the snooze bar of my alarm clock. Was it morning already? I sighed as I opened my eyes to see the morning light peeking in through the curtains of my bedroom. I turned to roll over to look at the now silent alarm clock but only my shoulder swiveled. It felt as though I was trying to turn myself through thick mud, something was resisting my movement. I tried to kick the blanket off me thinking I had become tangled in it, but nothing happened. What was going on? I pulled the blanket off me with my right hand and looked down at my legs. I tried to swivel out of bed but no matter how hard I tried to move my legs they remained motionless. I strained with all of my might until it felt as if my muscles were going to rip to shreds inside my legs. Nothing.

“MOM!” I called out through the house. No response. I leaned forward a bit and felt around my legs for some sort of invisible force holding them motionless.
“MOM!” I shouted again.
This time there came a response. “Be right there Steve.” I heard her call through the hallway leading to my bedroom. Again I tried to roll my legs out of bed, the muscles aching as I strained them. This time however, I noticed something, something terrifying. My legs didn’t flex as I strained to move them. What? This doesn’t make any sense. I put one hand on my thigh and tried again, this time the sensation of muscle was less. In that instance I understood the effect known as ghost limb.

My legs were dead to me. Still alive a flowing with my blood I had no control over them, no movement, no feeling. Over the next few month I would come to see them more as useless sacks of weight rather than my own legs.

That morning I lost my leg my mother came in, and after a bit of panic from her, then my Father, then Brother, we called an ambulance and I was taken to the hospital. Twelve hours of tests later I lay in a bed in the emergency room. A female doctor came in and looked at me as she stood beside the bed.
“Steve”, she said “Is everything ok? Have you been upset about anything at home or at school? I know High School can be a tough place.”
“Uh….no.”, I responded a bit confused by what I thought was small talk.
“How do your parents treat you?” the doctor asked. Suddenly I realized what was going on.
“I’m not crazy.” I said to her calmly. “There is something wrong with my back. It hurts up here” I tried to move my hand around to show her the spot in the center of my upper back that had been hurting more and more since I had arrived at the hospital.
“You know, you can tell me anything right?” The doctor seemed to have just ignored me.
“Mom, Dad!” I called through the hospital. Shortly after that my parents arrived and I explained that the doctors thought I was crazy and were obviously not doing any good.

My Parents packed me into the family car and we drove across town to our family doctor. The four of us talked and I explained that aside from my legs not working I was starting to have acute pain in my upper sine and could fell electrical shocks running down my back. After a few calls to different specialist the doctor came into the examination room and took out a small metal instrument. He ran it along the bottom of my foot, and despite having no feeling or control, my toes curled upward.

From this point I visited many specialist. I had 6 MRIs of various types, 2 CAT Scans, A Milo-gram and all sorts of other painful or annoying test. Finally after a few months of learning to function without my legs one of the doctors called us in to his office. He slapped a image of my spine up on a x-ray light. He explained there was ‘something’ on my spinal cord INSIDE of the vertebrae of my spine.

Several months later I had surgery. They cut open my back, split the bone of my spine and removed ‘it’ from my spinal cord. Within a year I was walking again.

But what was that inside of my spine? My parents never spoke to me about it and I had just let it go and almost forgot about it in my struggle to relearn to walk. As I started college 3 years later I decided to find out.

I went down to the University Hospital where I had the spinal surgery and spent so much time recovering and learning to walk again. I told them I had a neurological obstruction removed 3 years earlier and wanted to see my files on it. After putting in a request 5 hours later I had my file. I sat down in the records office of the hospital and opened the file. I thumbed through pages and pages of test results leading up to the surgery, all identifying whatever was on my spinal cord as ‘an unknown mass’. Finally I came across the surgeons notes.

A few things caught my eye.

-Mass appears to be biological material of some kind. Does not appear to be cancerous. Complex connective tissue exterior. Various fingers of material extend along nerve tissue. Mass has caused no observable damage to spinal cord.-

Odd, so the surgeon had no idea what he was removing aside from it seeming organic and living on my spinal cord without damaging it. I did recall my parents telling me that it was just pressing on the nerve and cutting off my legs. I continued to read…

-Lab Analysis: Mass has connective skin like tissue exterior, and verve endings on lower side that was in contact with patient spinal cord…

Wait, the Mass had NERVE CELLS? I continued.

…Complex tissue structure internal. Schedule tissue analysis-

The last page in my file is what to this day worries me. It was a Lab Results paper with one line on it.

“Mass and tissue samples missing. Will continue after search of Sample storage.”

I asked the assistant at the record counter what that meant. She had no idea and called the doctor who had written he last entry. After getting him on the phone she let me talk to him and after a bit of explanation of my case he recalled “Oh, right. Yeah, the samples went missing from our labs. I remember well because we had to go through a lot of paper work over missing samples.” After a few more questions the lab tech told me that nothing else had gone missing. Missing samples were very rare, he said that my case was one of only two cases he knew of. He also refused to talk about what he though the sample was, saying only “Its all in the file, I can comment otherwise.”


Author’s Note: This is a true story. I changed nothing except my name and dropped out other names such as my parents and the hospital. To this day I have no idea what was on my spinal cord. It has never come back. I have an MRI once every 2 years to confirm no other organisms are living inside of me. When I went back to get a photocopy of my files they too had gone missing. My parents still have one cross section MRI of the thing on my spine. But being a cross section, it shows nothing of great detail.

[Edited on 16-2-2004 by John bull 1]

Das is a great story. Very well done, Scienceguy.

DE

Great story.
I enjoyed it alot.

We have two entries now which means..........

We have a competition folks.

Plenty of time to get your entries in.

In the meantime well done ScienceGuyQ.Good entry.

[Edited on 19-1-2004 by John bull 1]

well told story scienceguy, and to think its real too. makes it even more appealing. good job!

ScienceguyQ
Good story, and kinda creepy. It certainly gets the mind working.

Well done

regards
flc

Originally posted by funlovincriminal
ScienceguyQ
Good story, and kinda creepy. It certainly gets the mind working.

Well done

regards
flc

Creepy is being reminded of it every time my back aches from the reconstructive part of the sugery. Durring the operation they had to detach all my muscles from my spine, saw 3 vertabae in half, then patch it all back up and reatach the muscles. Now they are a little tight and if i bend the wrong way they pull on my spine and shoulders.

I actualy tell most people who ask (when they see my scar) that it was just a blood clot on my spinal cord. They normaly buy it unless they are a doctor and know there is no blood in the spinal column.

As a lil addition to the story I have an odd surgical type scar on my head and idea where it came from. I noticed it around 14 when i shaved my head but my parents swore up and down i never had anything done to my head as a kid.

Creepy stuff, i don't think about any of it much.

Originally posted by ScienceGuyQ

Creepy stuff, i don't think about any of it much.

I certainly don't blame you, my friend.


take care,
regards
flc

Freaky.. Its hard to believe you, if its true its pretty weird.

ScienceGuyQ--Your story is very strange, and if I were in your position, I would be very frightened. You are in what I feel is a pretty strange, possibly risky situation.