A mother has revealed how she cheated death after being ‘internally decapitated’ by a drunk truck driver.
Stephanie Ronan of North Carolina suffered an Atlanto-occipital dislocation, in which the skull and top of the spine separate but the neck skin remains intact.
She was leaving a friend’s house on September 29, 2018 around 11pm when a truck suddenly crossed into her lane and hit her at 90 kilometers per hour, sending her flying into a ditch. The driver appeared to be drunk.
The fracture in her neck caused ligaments and muscles that held the skull in place on the upper vertebrae of the spine to tear from the skull – an injury that kills the majority of patients.
Ms Ronan said: ‘I may look like most women my age, but I face unnecessary battles every day that I didn’t ask for. Because of the speed and the type of impact caused, my body will never be the same.”
Stephanie Ronan of North Carolina suffered an Atlanto-occipital dislocation, in which the skull and top of the spine separate but the skin remains intact
Hardware had to be surgically inserted into her neck to repair the dislocation
In addition to the spinal laceration, she also suffered broken ribs, a broken femur, a broken kneecap, a broken foot, collapsed lungs, liver bruises and PTSD, making driving and sitting in the passenger seat emotionally unbearable, she said. Newsweek.
She said: ‘The trauma surgeons saved my life that night by putting me back together with hardware in my neck, femur, shin, foot and ribs. The impact also caused one of my eyes to become crooked, causing me to have a visual impairment.’
The most serious injury was the separation of her neck from her skull, colloquially called an internal decapitation.
She added: ‘I still remember opening my eyes and feeling complete panic when I was in hospital. With my range of motion in my neck and shoulder limited, driving was again a challenge. In my new car I have been dependent on blind spot monitoring and special mirrors.’
“To this day, I still have chronic pain and stress from the events that happened that day.”
The ditch where her car fell into was about 150 meters away. She was only about three miles from her friend’s.
She had to be cut from her vehicle and taken away in a helicopter to get to hospital as quickly as possible.
The drunk driver had a suspended driver’s license and beer cans in the car, Ms Ronan said. About three weeks before he hit Ms Ronan, the man had been given a drink driving charge and lost his driving licence.
She spent 19 days in the intensive care unit, where she was placed on a ventilator, followed by 11 days in the recovery unit and 23 days on the hospital’s rehabilitation floor.
Ms. Ronan now volunteers with Mothers Against Drunk Driving to hopefully turn her pain into a way to help others.
She now volunteers with Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD), which has given her a sense of purpose.
She said, “It’s a great reward when I turn my pain into something that could help others.
“Finally, I’ve learned to be grateful for the good days and to give myself grace when my body is in severe pain, when I can’t do the things I want or need to do.”
Internal decapitation is most commonly seen in motor vehicle accidents.
Severe spinal cord injuries disrupt vital nerve signals between the brain and body, which can lead to paralysis, impaired respiratory and cardiac function, and motor skills.
Researchers behind a 2015 study on Atlanto-occipital dislocation said: ‘If neurological injury from AOD is present, it can be devastating, often leading to sudden death due to brainstem injury.
“Previous autopsy reports have documented AOD as a cause of death in 6%-8% of traffic fatalities. However, not every case of AOD will lead to a fatal outcome or serious disability.’
The condition is more common in children and adolescents because the bones are not fully developed and may still contain cartilage.
They are also more likely to have proportionately larger heads and weaker neck muscles than adults.
It has a very high mortality rate, although the actual number of people who die from it is unclear because accident victims often do not undergo autopsies after their deaths.
A 2005 study reported that 16 children with AOD were seen in a Philadelphia hospital over a 17-year period, and 12 of them died. a mortality rate of 75 percent.
The normal distance between the skull and the spine is usually 1-2 millimeters.
Alabama native Christy Bullock, who made a turn too sharply while riding a motorcycle, hit a guardrail. While it held her body back, her head, encased in a heavy helmet, continued to move forward.
The separation between her head and spine was 10 to 15 millimeters.
