Mitch Barnett opens up about the neck surgery that…

Mitch Barnett opens up about the neck surgery that saved his career

Lucky: Knights backrower Mitch Barnett considers himself fortunate he did not suffer permanent damage after undergoing neck surgery.

Mitch Barnett can't resume training yet and it's likely to be at least two months before he can play footy again but he considers himself "one of the lucky ones".

The Newcastle Knights backrower underwent successful neck surgery in a Sydney hospital just over four weeks ago after a protruding disc that was touching his spinal cord left him with no feeling in his right arm.

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He suffered the injury during the Knights' win over the Wests Tigers in round two before the competition was shutdown due to the COVID-19 threat.

Speaking for the first time about his ordeal, Barnett told the Newcastle Herald it wasn't until he had scans the day after the game that he realised how serious it was and how fortunate he is the outcome wasn't far worse.

"To be honest when it happened, I thought I'd done my shoulder again," Barnett said. "I'd had a reconstruction on it about three years ago and as you do, you probably think the worst.

"Then I got off the field and I could move it a bit and I thought, it's not my shoulder, I don't know what it is, and I started to panic thinking I was a bit soft and had to get back out there. But then I lost all the power in my right arm. I couldn't have played on with it."

Knights physios suspected he had suffered some nerve damage but at the time, weren't aware of the extent.

"At the time, I couldn't compare the feeling to anything but looking back on it now, it's pretty scary. I had some pins and needles in places and I reckon I could have burnt my skin and not felt it."

It was only after the scans that Barnett realised how lucky he was.

"I got a shock after I had the scan the way they were talking," he said. "I walked in thinking it wasn't going to be much and it was a fair bit more than I was thinking. But then they told me the worst-case scenarios and they were a little bit confronting."

Those worse-case scenarios included a severed spinal cord or permanent loss of movement in his arm.

"I realised then I was one of the lucky ones," he said."

Fortunately, given its serious nature, Barnett was able to get in for surgery just over a week after the game with a specialist performing an anterior cervical discectomy and fusion procedure that included a bone graft to relieve the stress on the nerves and return feeling to his arm.

"I really struggled with it at first but coming out post-surgery, I couldn't have felt any better," he said. "I got all my normal functioning movements back quickly and now it's sort of a process of just letting everything heal before I can resume full training."

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