Bowie man walks after back surgery

Thursday, Feb. 9, 2006

Click here to enlarge this photo Photos by Christopher Anderson⁄The Star The X-ray shows the location of the implant. Click here to enlarge this photo Bowie resident Wayne Rardon holds up an X-ray showing his X-Stop implant that was surgically placed in his back to repair a back injury.

That’s because up until Jan. 24, a back injury left him in such pain he was unable to stand still, confined at many times to a wheelchair simply to relieve the pressure. But after undergoing a unique surgery known as ‘X-Stop’ late last month, he was up, walking and back home in Bowie the next day. Pain free.

‘‘My wife likes to refer to it as the drive-through surgery,” Rardon joked, sitting at his kitchen table while recovering last Thursday.

Rardon now lives with a barrel lodged against his spine, and plans to keep it there. The purpose of the barrel, and the trick behind the surgery, is to keep the spine in a slightly flexed position, so that the patient does not have to bend over to relieve the pain, as Rardon used to have to do.

‘‘That’ll be with me for the rest of my life, and that’s okay with me,” Rardon said. ‘‘I’m fairly pain tolerant, but I’d just as soon do without it if I can.”

Rardon, a civilian electrical engineer in the United States Coast Guard who also served in the Air Force, initially injured his back in October after trying to lift a stone slab by his porch. Afterward, he felt his lower vertebrae grinding together, and experienced shooting pain in his legs every time he tried to stand erect. Now that his normal life has resumed, he has many plans to see through.

Rardon likes to golf, he likes to work in the yard. But his last big adventure, as he calls it, is once again within reach since having the surgery.

‘‘One of my goals is to walk the Appalachian Trail,” he said, ‘‘and I feel like I’m going to be able to.”

He’s got the tent, he’s got the sleeping bag, he’s got the food and utensils, and once his projected six-week recovery period is over, he can start seriously thinking about hiking the 2,174-mile footpath, a six-month walk in the woods.

Rardon underwent the surgery at the Greater Baltimore Medical Center, under surgeon Charles Hartjen.

‘‘The great part about it is he was home the next day,” said hospital spokesman Michael Schwartzberg, who called the procedure ‘‘revolutionary.”

Rardon initially got tuned into Hartjen’s procedure after his neighbors noticed an ad for X-Stop. His wife, Carter, then surfed online to track down surgeons performing the method nearby, and Baltimore was the closest she could find.

Carter Rardon, 62, may have had some motivation – while her husband was suffering from the pain, he kept a bell by his bed to ring for her. And, she complained, her husband had a ready excuse not to do the dishes and other household chores. She cared for him anyway.

‘‘Carter rented a wheelchair so I could stay in one place for a while,” Wayne Rardon said. ‘‘We’re ready to return that wheelchair now.”

E-mail Judson Berger at jberger@gazette.net.