DISABILITIES

By Daniel J. Vance

Gary Matlack of Whittier, Calif., had a cervical spinal injury in April 2005 and his life hasn't been the same since.

“I was trying to act younger than I am,” he said in a telephone interview. “Our church has a national champion karate instructor and we were taking a class with him. One night I took what I thought was an easy fall. I tucked my chin into my shoulder and ruptured a disc. It was a freak accident.”

Matlack is 49, married with children, and an associate pastor of a large church in Whittier.

He said the injury came about when his disc “gel” exploded, two of his vertebrae “slammed together,” and his disc wall began pressing up against his spinal cord. Over a two-month period, three separate doctors misdiagnosed the injury as a bad sprain.

“I was nearly always in excruciating pain,” he said. “The day after I hurt it my head was hanging to one side and my neck was bulging out. I looked like something from a horror film.”

Finally, a neurosurgeon discovered the problem. Matlack was losing feeling in his hands and surgery seemed the only cure. The surgeon said that without surgery Matlack was at serious risk of permanent paralysis.

So he had two cervical spinal fusions. In the first operation, which wasn't successful, the neurosurgeon tried fusing the spine from the front. The second operation was posterior.

“I'm getting through this with lots of prayer and supportive friends,” he said while waiting for the second operation to heal. “But it has been very difficult. We are pretty scared and worried, not sure what the future holds. Yet everything that happens good or bad is in God's hands.”

He's also in a potential cash crunch. The State of California doesn't pay disability benefits to ministers, he said, and his church didn't have private disability insurance for him when the accident happened.

“I'm just getting to the point,” he said, “where I can sit at the computer a few hours a day without pain. I am hopeful I can work. If I can't, I have no income. Just the prospect of not being able to feed my family is tough. If my bones don't fuse (after this second operation) I could have yet another surgery with a different bone graft.”

He said his greatest fight is with discouragement and depression.

For more, see www.danieljvance.com