Paralyzed surgeon continues to operate on patients on wheel-chair

Dr Ted Rummel thought his life was pretty much over when he was left paralyzed from the waist-down in 2010.

The exceptional surgeon had been diagnosed with a cavernous hemangioma – a blood filled cyst – in the middle of his spinal cord a year earlier. Neurologists told him the cyst couldn’t be surgically removed, as the procedure would paralyze him instantly. Instead he was told to rest, wait, and pray the cyst never ruptured, reports the Oddity Central.

Unfortunately, for Dr. Rummel, the cyst did burst in September 2010, just a week after he performed a rotator cuff surgery on his wife Kathy – his last surgery for the next two years. He suffered a terrible back ache, followed by numbness and weakness in his legs. Within days, “a wave crashed over his lower body and took all feeling and mobility with it.” Dr. Rummel was paralyzed for life.



It’s sad that something so terrible should have happened to him, after he cured thousands of people in St. Charles County of pain and stiffness in their joints. In his best days, he had practiced over 1,000 operations surgeries per year in O’Fallon, Missouri.

Yet, on a clear December morning in 2012, Dr. Rummel was back in the O R doing what he does best. It was as though he had never been away. He performed surgery on a patient’s shoulder, a procedure that required him to be standing. The resilient doctor stood for over an hour, completed an uneventful surgery and later, took his team out for pizzas. “I’m back,” he kept exclaiming in relief. “I’m back.”




The Missouri doctor’s rehabilitation from his own disease is said to have been a long-drawn and complicated process, but he made it work with sheer grit. He had developed a blood clot in his lung and contracted many serious infections. He suffered from a deep depression over his condition. Things got so bad that one day he found himself on the back deck of his house, a gun in his hand. The thought of his wife, kids and grandchildren forced him to keep going. 

Publicly, Dr. Rummel always preferred to put up a brave front. He never cried over his troubles, at worst he texted his friends that he was having a ‘bad day’. People admired his optimism, sense of humor and upbeat attitude. He hated being pitied and had no patience for negativity. Nurse Diana Eisenbath, who assisted the doctor for 17 years, said, “He told me, ‘If you’re going to be down, you’re out of here.’”