Doctors said my surgery was a 50/50 chance - Shan George

Veteran Nollywood actress, Shan George has disclosed that she was given a 50/50 chance of surviving surgery after she suffered a spine disease.

According to her, what started off as a swollen leg landed her in the hospital. She went on to talk about how the illness later left her bedridden for months.

She said “Sometime in late 2018, I had just finished organising the artists that would be on the governor’s band for the Calabar carnival in December. After all the rigorous activities, I suddenly realised that my knee was swollen. I didn’t understand what was going on, so I just attributed it to the carnival stress. I took some drugs and rested for a couple of days expecting to be up and about in a couple of days.However, by early January, the pain had increased. I kept managing it by using pain killers, but by March, it had become worse. I then started going to hospitals to find out what was wrong. Eight months later, my left leg was almost paralysed. I was already bedridden for some months. That was when my doctor asked me to do a series of tests because I had been on medication since January and I wasn’t getting any better. They wanted to know if there was any disease in me that had been feeding on the medications I was taking. All the tests came out negative and they had to do an MRI scan. After the scan, they found out I had lumbar spondylosis, which is a disease of the spine. There is no medication for it and they told me it was a surgery that could correct it; it was a 50/50 situation. I had the surgery on August 29, 2019, and it was successful. (As a result of the illness), I didn’t do anything for the whole of 2019”.