Gratitude Stories - Anna
Anna Corwin had tried nearly everything to alleviate her increasingly debilitating back pain. Once a very active nurse who loved gardening, Anna had begun, over several years, to use a wheelchair to get around. Travelling, shopping, and working in the yard all became problematic. “I had extensive physical therapy and then spinal injections, but they all stopped helping,” she says.
After consulting three orthopedic surgeons and a neurosurgeon, Anna was eventually referred to a prominent Boston hospital, where she was advised to consider a spinal baclofen pump for pain control.
Her husband, Bill Corwin, MD, reached out to a new colleague, Alan Daniels, MD, Chief of The Miriam’s Division of Spine Surgery, for advice on the pump recommendation. Dr. Corwin had met Dr. Daniels in The Miriam emergency department when he had helped care for a close family friend who had metastatic spine cancer. Dr. Daniels had worked extremely hard to make the patient’s final weeks as comfortable as possible after stabilization surgery.
When approached regarding the request about the pump, Dr. Daniels asked permission to review Anna’s CT and MRI films. He and Dr. Corwin discussed having Anna come in for an evaluation. An offer was made to attempt corrective surgery, because “that is what we do,” Dr. Daniels explained.
In the skillful hands of Dr. Daniels, Anna had her T10 to S1 fusion surgery at The Miriam Hospital. Five hours, two eight-inch rods, 18 screws, and two large anchors into the pelvis later, Anna began a new chapter of her life that she never thought would be possible.
“From not being able to walk to getting back in my garden and playing with my three grandchildren, it has been a 1000 percent difference,” says Anna. “The impact Dr. Daniels and the Spine Center at The Miriam Hospital has had on my life is dramatic. I can’t express how grateful I am that I had this surgery. I don’t know where I’d be now if I didn’t.”