Unique surgery gives sergeant new life after crippling war wounds

Sergeant Michael Daley serving in Afghanistan.

Sergeant Michael Daley’s nightmare began on a particular day in 2011.

He was serving with the U.S. Army in Iraq. Daley and members of his unit were on a routine drive through Zarghun Shahr in Afghanistan, an area teeming with Al Kaida terrorists. It was the middle of the day – broad daylight. There were five vehicles in the convoy and Daley was in the third vehicle.

“Next thing I know,” said Daley, “the whole front end of the vehicle blew off. I came to a few minutes later. My feet were hanging out of the vehicle.”

The vehicle struck an Improvised Explosive Device (IED). The good news was that Daley and the four companions riding with him in the truck survived the blast.

“We all went back to base and went to medical,” Daley remembered. “At that time, I did not know my back and neck were injured.”

Another thing Daley did not know at that time was those injuries would put him through a decade of hell or that a unique surgical procedure would eventually reclaim his life for him.

 

Daley after he returned home from his tour of duty.

When Daley returned to the states, he was stationed at Fort Polk. For some time, he did not notice any discomfort in his back or neck. He started training to be a staff sergeant. That was when he noticed something was wrong and that “I could not do everything I wanted to do.” 

“While you are there [in Afghanistan], you don’t have time to think about it,” he said about his injuries. “We were constantly being bombarded by artillery strikes, so we were always on edge. You don’t realize until later when your stress level and your anxiety level come down. I noticed when I stopped worrying about being shot at.” 

When he sought medical help, army doctors put Daley on a program of epidural shots and physical therapy which he estimated continued for six to eight months.  

After transferring to Fort Stewart, he continued similar treatments for the next two years. With the treatments providing little relief, Daley took a medical retirement in 2014.   

Upon transitioning from his military career, Daley worked as a loss prevention supervisor, then secured a job with the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service, first in Newark and later in Cranberry. 

Daley continued his treatments but “for the better part of ten years, his pain kept getting worse. It began taking its toll at the office. 

“The epidurals eventually were not working very well,” Daley reported, “and all the time I missed at the office going to appointments and burning through my sick leave didn’t help. I could not sit or stand; driving when your back is injured is tough. 

Daley’s physical problems also took their toll at home.  

Daley met his current wife Crystal in 2015 and married her in 2108.  

“When I met Crystal, we had conversations about my injuries,” he said. “She has been my rock. She has been with me every step and every which way.” 

The Daley family – (from left to right) Michael Daley, his daughter Skye, wife Crystal and son Max.

Daley has a son (now 15) and a daughter (now 13) from a previous marriage. He would see them every other weekend, but Daley found there was less and less he could do with them. 

“My kids love to go outside for walks or to play. I would go with them but then I would be done for a couple of days – even a week sometimes. I missed some of the things with the kids. It was frustrating.” 

With a decade of unsuccessful treatment behind him, Daley decided to look for a new answer to his painful condition. 

Turns out the answer was right around the corner. 

Dr. Chanakya (Sean) Jandhyala is an orthopedic surgeon who graduated from Tulane University. He had recently opened an office in Toms River, literally right around the corner from the Daley house. 

“When I started looking for an orthopedic surgeon, I checked around and saw a listing for Dr. Jandhyala and saw he had great reviews,” Daley said. 

When I first saw Michael, I could tell he was struggling with his pain,” said Jandhyala. “So, we got an MRI. It revealed a damaged and degenerative disc which was causing his back pain, but it was also pinching the nerves in his lumbar area and that was causing the excruciating pain running down his leg.” 

 Jandhyala discussed two options with Daley. One surgical technique would make room for the nerve where it was being pinched. This would be a less invasive, less risky procedure requiring a shorter recovery time. The drawback was that it would only relieve the pain in his leg, not his back.   

The second option was a more complicated procedure that involved removing the damaged disc completely and replacing it with a metal spacer to give the spine stability. While it was a riskier procedure with a longer recovery time, it would address the whole of Daley’s pain. 

That was the moment for me when I said let’s just fix it altogether,” said Daley. 

In early 2024, the surgery was performed at Community Medical Center, an RWJBarnabas Health facility. Jandhyala took a somewhat unique approach to the procedure with the help of vascular surgeon Dr.Issam Koleilat. They accessed Daley’s spine from both the front and the back.

“This surgery is technically challenging, for sure,” said Jandhyala. “It is not necessarily unusual, but it takes time, and you have to have some experience doing it. I had a great surgical team around me. I had full faith in them.

“Going in through the front gives me a different type of access to the spine,” Jandhyala continued. “Once I get to the front of the spine, I can remove the whole damaged disc in its entirety without concern for damaging the nerves because there are no nerves in the way.

Jandhyala explained that the spine’s structure is bone, then disc, and then bone again. In Daley’s case, his disintegrating disc was essentially flat, causing bone to sit on top of bone.

“What I do is take out the damaged disc and put in the spacer to jack up the space where the healthy disc would normally be. This increases the space between the two bones. This alleviates some of the pressure on the nerve.”

Jandhyala then accessed Daley’s spine from the back.

“When I go through the back, that is where the nerves are,” he said, “and things are a lot more delicate. I can physically see the nerve and make sure it is decompressed and put in some small screws to kind of hold everything together.”

“When I woke up,” recalled Daley, “I had no back pain and no neck pain. It was completely gone.

An obvious and lingering question is why didn’t the doctors treating Daley for a decade not propose this surgery?

“If Michael came to me when he was 30 years old, I would have told him to try and avoid surgery and try to exhaust physical therapy, injections, and medications first,” explained Jandhyala, “because there is a large cohort of people who do well with these conservative options. Even if he came to me eight or nine months ago and he told me he had not done those things, I would have told him to do them first.”

Daley’s recovery period took a few months. 

 “The first couple of weeks were bad but once you get past that, you start to see the improvements,” he said. “It was about three months before I could have some kind of life again.”  

The former army sergeant said his prognosis is good and that everything is moving in the right direction.   

“I am still limited on how much I can lift,” he reported. “But I was able to help put up the Christmas lights this year and help around the house. It’s amazing.”