Woman's almost 'internally decapitated' head reattached after 37 surgeries
Doctors have successfully reattached a woman's head after 37 surgeries as she had suffered a near "internal decapitation" following a sports accident years ago when she was a teenager.
Daily Mail reported that Megan King, a 35-year-old resident of Illinois, damaged her right ankle and spine, and tore the muscle off her shoulder blades when she leaped in the air to catch a soccer ball during a gym class in 2005. She was 16 at the time.
King spent over a year on crutches, but instead of getting better, her symptoms worsened. Her joints weakened and her muscles began to tear, and her shoulder blades ached in unbearable pain.
In the coming years, she underwent 22 surgeries on her shoulders and shoulder blades, but to no avail.
In 2015, King was diagnosed with hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, a genetic disorder that causes overly flexible joints and stretchy, fragile skin, according to Mayo Clinic.
A year later, her neck got dislocated and she had to wear a halo brace, a device that keeps the head and neck in place so the spine may heal.
But when the brace was being removed, King's skull became nearly detached from her spine.
"I flew my chair back to keep gravity from decapitating me," she's quoted as saying. "My neurosurgeon had to hold my skull in place with his hands. I couldn't stand. My right side was shaking uncontrollably."
King was rushed to the emergency room, and doctors had to fuse her skull to her spine.
"It was a horror show. I woke up unable to move my head at all," she said.
After King's 37 surgeries to date, she can no longer shift her head up, down, left, or right.
"I'm literally a human statue. My spine doesn't move at all," she said. "But that doesn't mean I've stopped living."
