Corby Campbell

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My Breakneck Story

Gimpman Continues: 2011 Edition

Gimpman Continues: 2018 Edition

My Testimony


My Breakneck Story

Here it is. The real story of how Corbinealious Brycetholomue Campbelliticus Maxiumus Danger the III (yes, that’s me) became GimpMan.

Ever since I was a wee tyke I always wanted to be able to do a back flip off a wall. During my 9th grade year (2000ish) I taught myself how to do a round-off back flip. A few months later my older brother and amazing mom helped me figure out how to do a standing back flip. I honed my skills to the point where I could do 7 standing back flips in a row. My junior year I tried a wall flip for the first time and kicked myself for not trying it earlier, it was a cakewalk. The point of all this is I had been able to do a back flip off a wall for 3 years at the point I broke my neck. It wasn’t a mistake, it was my destiny :).

During my first semester at college (UVSC) I had a Computer and Networking Sciences scholarship (yay for being a nerd!). 'Twas almost the end of the semester... I was doing okay, I was even carrying a 16-page long paper about how video games don’t cause violent behavior. I was heading to the gas station to buy a 74-cent hot dog before going to the bus stop to go straight from school to work. I decided to expel some energy doing some back flips off the wall like I often did (they felt so cool). I was alone and out front of the school. I did the first back flip just fine, but the grass must have been slightly wet. When I went to do a second flip I slipped.

I don’t know how I rotated, but somehow I hit the back of my neck (because a bone was pushed forward) and ended up face down on my belly. I believe the first thing I thought was "oops". I tried to get up but nothing moved. I was probably there for less than a minute before someone came up and asked if I was ok. I told him I couldn’t move anything, but besides that I was fine. He called for help and the next guy who came over was an EMT, which was nice. The school cop showed up and told me an ambulance was on the way. He asked if there was anyone I wanted him to call, so I had him call my Mom, and Sami (who was my girlfriend at the time, haha). The ambulance arrived soon, and on the way to the hospital we stopped by home depot to get some screws for my neck (just kidding). Once I arrived I got to see my mom and have a blessing before going into surgery. Everyone felt at peace, especially me. I turned the whole thing into a joke, which was lots of fun. I was in surgery within 1-2 hours of the fall.

Sometime very soon after I broke my neck we heard about this experimental study going on that I might qualify for. Let me explain the theory… so, most of your body regenerates right? When you cut your finger it heals. Well, 2 things in your body don’t regenerate, your brain, and your spinal cord. Which is why brain damage, and spinal cord injuries are generally permanent. I’ll come back to this in a few paragraphs.

Random story first. So when you stop moving the bottom half of your body, sometimes weird stuff can happen with blood flow. And I guess often people have had blood clot a little, move up to their heart, and kill them. This is generally an undesired outcome. So, they put this little blood filter thing in my hip to catch possible blood clots (pic will follow). And they pull it out like 3 months later. Big deal right? Well, for some reason they can cut your hip and set it straight in. but when they pull it out, they have to go through the top of the vein. And the best place to access it is from your neck. So they put 2 tubes in your neck and go all the way down to your hip to pull out this huge blood filter thing.

Here are a bunch of pictures from the hospital, with more stories in the captions:

So the little red spot is where they went in, this was the first of my 2 least favorite procedures. Oh yeah, the other scar is the original fix, they go through the front to fix it, weird huh? Anyway.
Doesn't look too bad, right? Well, the little alien looking thing on the left is the blood filter, we put the chap stick in there for a measure of how big the thing was. Can you imagine someone going in a vein in your neck to pull that metal object out of your hip? It gives me the jibblies just thinking about it!
When I broke the c5 bone in my neck (the fifth bone from the top of the spine) it bruised my spinal cord around there, and now everything below it can't signal from or send signals to my brain. Actually I’ve got c6. each bone connects to different places, if I had c7 I'd have triceps. But if you ever see me you can’t really tell I don’t have all my arm muscles unless I tell you. Well, fingers and wrists are still obvious… anyway! Back to the story!<br><br>So spinal injuries are permanent right? I qualified for this ProNeuron study. Their premise was to take some regenerative cells from my body, and put them into the spine where the bruise is. It wasn’t expected to be a complete cure, but it was supposed to help some mobility come back. Overall it didn’t seem to affect me either way. But it was a great experience! It was the #1 spinal injury hospital in the world. So we learned a lot about helpful tips for surviving in a wheelchair.<br><br>So the study was taking place at Craig Hospital in Denver Colorado, but I lived in Utah, (oh! Random detail! This had to take place within 2 weeks of the original break, so this was all RIGHT up front) so they put me on a roller bed threw me in a jet and flew me down there.
Here's the jet
Here's them loading me
And here's inside! It was very small. Enough room for me, my mom, the guy in that pic, and the pilot. That’s pretty much it. Anyway we flew down and they did all sorts of admissions tests. Oh! Lol. Ok, so I had to be tested once for the hospital admittance, once for the tests records, and once for… fun? I don’t remember what the third one was for. But one of the tests is to figure out where I can and can’t feel. So they take a cue tip and start from the top and work down. So like they brush my cheek and I'm like “yeah I can feel that.” And then like 2 places on my neck, then about collar bone level, and so on, including between every pair of ribs. And remember I can’t really feel pretty much from armpit level down, so most of it was a waste. Anyway that’s not the best part, so after they do that whole test with a cue tip, they do it with a safety pin. And they have you tell them if it feels sharp or blunt or not at all. So now they stick me with a safety pin in 1000 places. Luckily I can only feel like 10% of them, but they did this test 3 times in one day!! Yeah, ok moving on.
Here's a picture of a scale they used
So, for the actual procedure there was 3 major things. One they had to take a 12 by 3 cm diamond shape piece of skin off my underarm (to use as dead tissue). 2 they had 2 get some blood from a deep place inside for some reason, just outside blood veins wouldn’t work for some reason. They mixed my blood with my skin so my blood would try to regenerate it, then they’d take those regenerative cells, cut a big slit in the back of my neck, and put those cells on the bruise. That being said, this is a picture of a triple lumen left sub-clavian catheter. Them putting this in is the other of my 2 least favorite things that happened in the hospitals. I was conscious when they put it in. the problem is local anesthetics only seem to have about a 50% effectiveness on me. So I could feel them putting this in, and they scraped my collar bone on the way down. Ugh! *shudders*
Here you can see my sexy body, and the dumb neck brace I had to wear at first. Notice on my right arm the white strip, that’s where they took the skin, I still have the scar. The best thing about this picture is I only have one armpit shaved. Cool huh?
Then there’s the incision on my neck, at first it was covered with a ton of thick absorbent pads like so.
But after like 3 days they take them off, and it looked like this. Oh, did I mention they hold it together with like 40 staples? Yeah, staples.
Eventually I got them out though, I still have this piece of tape containing them, it looks like this
Leaving my neck lookng like this. 'Cept less shiny.







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Gimpman Continues: 2011 Edition