How to break your neck without knowing...

Imagine waking up one day and realising that you can never play the sport of your dreams again, or you can never wacth your favourite TV show, or read your favourite book. This happened to me in a late summer evening in July - a doctor walking into his office where I am waiting and he says this: "I have some good news and some bad news..."

January:

A cold wintery saturday and the school rugby team are preparing for the match ahead, of which I am involved. Being only 5 foot 7 doesn't exactly make me the largest player on the field but that never stopped me. The game wasn't the most interesting we had played, but as always it was still a tough scrap. The most memerable part for me was when a huge forward well over 6 foot kneed me in the head in a tackle. My right shoulder went a bit tingly afterwards but I carried on until it got heavy. I spoke to the pitchside paramedic and he suspected I had pulled a muscle or two in my shoulder and neck and that ice and some rest would do the trick.

February:

Just over a month had gone by and my shoulder was feeling great again, so I played another match. Nothing eventful happened until I woke up the next day and I couldn't move my head off the pillow. My whole neck and shoulder felt frozen. I got up eventually and went to school with a lot of pain in the region and asked my coach what he suggested. He sent me to the school doctor who again said it was deep tissue muscle damage and that I should get some physiotherapy.

March:

I've begun some treatment and deep tissue massages on the neck and shoulder to try and free it up. We tried everything, from massages to acupuncture which all resulted the same way - a little improvement but still something not right in the neck.

June:

After a few months my wonderful physiotherapist decided enough was enoguh and something underlying was the problem. He referred me for an MRI scan and sent me to this neck specialist. I was excited but uncertain at this point of what to expect. I went in and for those who don't know what an MRI scanner is, it is a huge electromagnet that spins around causing an electromagnetic field that helps map your body. My kind doctors all explained to me that if I had any metal on me or in the machine, it was slice through me like a knife through butter.

July:

Results time...

As I was saying earlier, the neck specialised doctor came in and said,

"I have some good news and some bad news... The good news is I know exactly what is wrong with you - the bad news is, you've broken your neck."

Now at this point I just started laughing because I thought he was joking, but then I realised he wasn't laughing and my face dropped. Initially I thought, "wait, broken neck means you die right?".

"How are you not dead?" and "How did you not realise?" were the two most common questions I received afterwards. The doctor went onto explain how I had broken it downwards - my neck had compressed, fracturing my 5th vertebra down. Luckily for me, by the time I had played again it had begun to fuse together to my other vertebra so it was stable.

What a weird 6 month journey that was, but it did teach me to always get a second opinion, especially medically. I was only 15 at the time when it happened, and I'm well now.

Look after yourself!