DHS Principal Home After Back Surgery

</element><element id="paragraph-1" type="body"><![CDATA[ Du Quoin High School principal Lybrand Beard has been released from St. Francis Medical Center in Cape Girardeau following several hours of a very delicate and tedious surgery to fuse together discs in his spine.

Beard has carried out his duties as principal for many years despite the oft-times excruciating pain in his back and legs, the latent effects from a high school pole vaulting injury.

Beard talked to the newspaper Monday from his Laurel Avenue home and while his voice was weak, he said the chronic and worsening pain in his right leg and right foot is now gone. "They won't be able to tell me a lot more until the surgical pain is gone," he said.

Beard underwent surgery at St. Francis on December 22 and was to return to the hospital on Monday to have staples from the surgery removed.

A Dr. Vaughn performed the surgery.

Beard said fusing the discs together would provide more stability, end the grinding of those discs, better protect the nerves running through the backbone and alleviate much of his pain.

Beard enjoyed a very successful athletic career, followed by careers in mining and educational administration.

The hopes and prayers of an entire community have been with the family throughout the evaluation process and finally surgery.