Several readers emailed us about former WHS student Kyle Barnett. Currently a sophomore at Syracuse University, he has suffered significant back pain and nerve damage as a result of, he believes, his time as a high school football player.  He recently posted an appeal on the fundraising website GoFundMe.com to ask for help covering the cost of much-needed surgery. Without it, he says he’ll have to face continued pain and possible paralysis. We’ve reposted his story below.

Hello, my name is Kyle Barnett.

I am currently a sophomore at the Whitman School of Management of Syracuse University. I am creating this “gofundme” because I truly need the financial help.

My family is not “well off.” We are facing a lot of debt and it amazes me that my parents manage to pay for my brother’s and my education without losing our home. That is not the current crisis I am facing, however.

Before I transferred to Syracuse University, I was at Eastern Connecticut State University with my brother. After my freshman year, my grades were good enough for me to transfer. During this past summer before my sophomore year, I began to feel electric shocks shooting through my legs after certain movements. Naturally, I looked this up and thought, “Oh, it must be sciatica.” I went to a doctor in the beginning of August, and what would you know, he told me to get a MRI on my lumbar vertebrae because it is probably sciatica.

Upon getting this MRI, he reviewed the results and pointed out that I have a minor disc bulge. He gave me a prescription for physical therapy and sent me on my way. This doctor will remain unnamed as I do not wish to harm his career.

About two weeks after this, I went to school. Come the end of August, I had begun experiencing pain, weakness, and numbness throughout my legs. Because of my original diagnosis, I had just thought that my sciatica was worsening. I was wrong. I figured it was time to use my physical therapy prescription, and I began searching for doctors.

I found a chiropractor who works at a rehab facility and he happened to take my insurance (Obamacare, not many people take it.) This doctor was very intelligent. He never guarenteed me that it was sciatica, in fact, he was determined to prove it otherwise. However, my insurance company fought him every step of the way. After seeing this doctor for about a month and a half, he told me that my insurance rejected the requests for new MRIs multiple times. He never stopped trying, though, and finally, about two weeks ago, it was approved.

I got my cervical vertebrae MRI, and all it showed was the wear-and-tear from my high school football career. What caught my doctor’s attention was that this MRI had caught a bulging disc at the top of my thoracic region (the next series of vertebrae). He immediately got me a new MRI approved for my thoracic. This is what lead me here.

I have seven herniations in my thoracic region. Only 2-percent of disc herniations occur in the thoracic region. (Multiple neurosurgeons have shared this statistic with me.) One of these herniations is severely compressing my spinal cord, thus providing my symptoms that were worsening on a daily basis for two months.

Currently, I can barely walk without either tripping over myself from my impaired reflexes or falling due to my muscular weakness. Also, my feet are too numb to regulate my temperature, so I can be sweating one minute and freezing cold the next.

A first neurosurgeon I went to said he will do an “open thoracic discectomy.” This way, they go in through my chest and remove the disc that way. They’d do it this way because after he arranged for me to get a CT scan we found that the herniations are all calcified, meaning they’ve been herniated for at least a year. They’d also be harder to remove. I’m assuming this all must be from my many high school football big hits, but there’s no way to be sure.

The neurosurgeon whom I went to for a second opinion and hoping to get a quicker surgery date than the first had offered, said to my parents, “If this were my son… I’d get a specialist.” He was not pleased that the first surgeon would go in and remove the major herniation and not consider the others that were minorly compressing the cord. So, this is why I’m here now.

Basically, very few doctors take my insurance as is. These specialists will absolutely not take my insurance. My parents, though they’re willing to take on even more debt for my health, really can not afford to pay for this surgery. If I don’t get this surgery, I have to deal with this pain and deal with an even more painful loss of function from my chest down (paralysis).

We are currently in the process of finding a surgeon, but we will need to travel to a different state come time for surgery.

I do not want to become paralyzed. My life has just begun and I’ve worked so hard to get where I am today. I have a loving girlfriend who has been my best friend for many years and we fully plan to get married and have children one day. I will probably have to sacrifice my semester, but I refuse to sacrifice my legs.

Please help me to pay for this surgery. If there ever was somebody truly deserving of funding, I do believe it is me. If you were to ask any of my friends, I believe they’d say the same. I try my best to be a selfless human being, just like my mother taught me, and I hope now is the time that pays off for me.

Thank you for taking the time to read and/or share my story. Thank you very much if you donate; you have no idea how appreciative I am.

UPDATE:  TUESDAY, NOV. 11

One of the specialists finally got back to me. He said that he wouldn’t try anything else other than the open thoracotomy as the most important thing right now is the extremely bad herniation at T6-7 (the one severely compressing my spinal cord). If the other herniations are a problem, they will be dealt with in a much safer and timelier manner in the future. Thus, we’re going with the original neurosurgeon from ONS [Orthopedics, Neurosurgery & Sports Medicine in Greenwich] because he is specialized enough with regards to the thoracic spine to do the open thoracotomy. I’m not gonna explain the procedure to freak anybody out, but if you’re interested, you can look it up online. Surgery is next Tuesday, Nov. 18. Hopefully I will be able to recover in time to take my finals, though my doctors doubt it. Thank you all so much for your donations, I really appreciate it. You’ve helped so much with the financial worry and you’re all amazing people. Pray for me for Tuesday, please!

To contribute to Kyle’s fundraising, visit his GoFundMe.com page, here.