Peyton Manning

[John Waylon]

He's not expected to live through the night... Unfortunate.

As expected, Peyton Manning passed away around 1:30 AM this morning after a severe bout with rabies... He will be sorely missed.

[The HOB]

dayum that rabies... same thing that got my pappy!!!

[ruksak]

FWIW I do these exact surgeries and trained with some of the colts MDs way back when, so I guess I can't avoid my 2 cents here. I don't have an "inside scoop" nor would I ever probe for one, but this is what can be put together from the media, medicine, and bit of speculation:

Peyton's first surgery was a posterior minimally invasive foraminotomy by Fessler in Chicago. As far as I can gather, he had pain and probably not much nerve dysfunction (numbness/weakness) with that episode. The recovery is somewhat trivial other than incisional pain, and after a few weeks it's hard to have the problem recur. Common sense says light duty for a while, but after that increase as tolerated.

With this 2nd surgery, from what I've read, he had again a minimally invasive discectomy from a posterior approach. The posterior discectomy is somewhat old-school, as most would now have an anterior discectomy and fusion vs. artificial disc, but the benefit of posterior (esp with minimally invasive making for a better recovery) is no hardware required and a patient gets a chance for more "normal" anatomy in recovery. To have a fusion is not a contraindication to playing football, but it raises flags, and one must wait at least 3-6 months for impact if bone is not fused... So what he had is not the fusion, but it is still wise to wait 1-3 months for impact, with the idea being that recurrent bulging from the residual (normal, non herniated) disc could still occur and compress nerve or spinal cord.

As far as I can tell he did have either numbness or weakness, but I don't know if it's public knowledge as to the etiology being nerve root or spinal cord? I can't imagine that peyton would have ignored significant symptoms, so he probably will have a quick recovery if any numbness/weakness was present preop.

I think they are letting him throw now, as that's a motion he is in control of, rather than taking snaps and throwing in "game" scenarios where falling is likely or unpredictable forces are likely.

A healthy, motivated athlete will probably be fine, and they wouldn't have signed him if he wasn't likely to have a good prognosis (and I can promise you the Feuer, Fessler, and about 6-12 other surgeons have already discussed this with the bean counters). I'm personally not very worried about him playing at full capacity medically, I just hope with the lockout practice delays and now peyton not throwing that the team is in sync when they need to be for real games?

+1 For being more smarterer than me.

Very well written and sensible.

[crazy blue]

Peyton is like Allen Iverson now. Practice????

As long as he says it 27 times during the interview all is well.