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Your painting looks exactly like him without the beard. You are very talented and I’m glad that Dr. Fogelson and his staff were able to help restore your gift! I also have read some of his scientific journal articles and found that video of him last week. I haven’t found any articles about my issue yet, so I’m hoping he’s previously encountered and treated someone like me. I’ve had two local surgeons (orthopedic and neuro) refuse to even make a treatment plan for me, besides referring me for pain management and physical therapy. Pain management only offers me epidural steroid injections (that don’t help) or mind-altering medications (refuse). There is one local neurosurgeon, who just completed his residency last year, that came up with a surgical intervention, but he’s never treated someone like me before. He’s also overlooking my increasing neurological symptoms.
Thanks for all of the extra info, I’ll have to check out the places mentioned. I haven’t decided whether I’m driving or flying yet, but I live in South Louisiana and it’s a very long drive. I requested for the concierge service to send me info on lodging and attractions.
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@astphi889 I was looking up a hemivertebra, and read that this is a congenital deformity where part of the vertebra is missing and it causes a deformity like scoliosis at that point. Is that an accurate description of your issues? I imagine this might be difficult to live with.
A good thing about Mayo is the high volume of patients that come through with unusual and difficult spine conditions. These are cases that other surgeons refuse to take (as it was in my case even though the fix was simple). They probably have seen some similar cases, and that may be the reason Dr. Fogelson wanted your case, knowing that many surgeons are not skilled enough to help. He chose to be a spine surgeon because of the difficulty and challenge of solving the problems and that is what makes him so good. Dr. Fogelson does some big surgeries for scoliosis and spines that are twisted into unusual shapes. He has used 3 d printing to study a patient's spine to work out how he will approach it in surgery.
Thanks for your nice compliment. Dr. Fogelson really liked that painting. It even made the news in his college's alumni newsletter. He took it home, and I also gave him a couple of framed prints I had made from it and that may have hung somewhere in the Neurosurgery department.
Here's some posts with updates about the painting and a video of me painting it at 11 months post surgery. I was still tired and had to take breaks to rest.
https://connect.mayoclinic.org/comment/222044/
Article in Realism Today that I wrote
https://connect.mayoclinic.org/comment/222057/
Jennifer