Imagine in your mind’s eye you are skiing very fast down a medium steep slope. It is late winter so the temperatures are brisk but you are comfortable in your gear. The snow is a bit on the slushy side. You can feel the snow gliding underneath your feet and the cold buffeting you, and hear the roar of the wind rushing passed your ears. It’s like flying but not. Suddenly and without any warning you have fallen face first straight forward landing flat on the snow, almost spread eagle, with your head downhill from your feet. Your skis have flown off as they are supposed to during a serious fall. It feels as if someone is dragging you face down, head first, at a high rate of speed straight downhill. Your eyes are closed and all you can feel is the snow underneath your face and body as you, foot by foot, dig a trough in the snow with your head and body. Then, due to the momentum of the speed you were travelling before you fell and the fact that your body is moving faster than your head, your feet and body begin to lift off the ground, and fold over your head and neck, increasingly bending your neck. Pretty soon, your face is the only part of your body that is touching the earth as your body, legs, and feet are speeding downhill above your head. It is an odd phenomenon that during moments like this, time seems to slow down, and you are thinking to yourself, “So this is what it feels like to break your neck. I wonder if I’ll hear it snap.” Your neck has reached its limit of tolerance for extension and tension in general. If something does not happen soon, the ligaments that hold your spine together are going to rupture and the bones of the neck will slice or sever your spinal cord. Quadriplegia, paraplegia, death. Just as your mind has accepted your immediate future, your head literally snaps out of the trough it has dug and you land on your back with your feet downhill from your head.
You are lying on your back facing the sky and you immediately begin damage assessment. You are still alive. Good. You still feel your hands and feet. Better. You can move them. Best. Anything broken? You gingerly get up to your feet and quickly realize that you were in full view of the riders on the chairlift. It is a convention among skiers to cheer a spectacular fall as long as the person is not obviously hurt. You get your requisite cheers from your audience as they are appreciative of your fall, and that it was you and not them.
You find your skis, strap them on, and in a slightly dizzy state limp down to the ski lodge where your spouse and child are waiting for you. This was the planned last run. You decided you are going to downplay your fall, but the first thing they say to you as their faces convey a look of shock is, “What happened to you?” How did they know, you wonder? What gave it away? Was it the look in your eyes? “Why do you ask?” “You have blood all over your face,” they explode. It turns out that the ice crystals in the snow cut the skin all over your face so not only do you have a severe neck injury, but your face is going to scab over in the next few days so everyone will be staring at you asking, “What happened to you?” So over and over you will be forced to tell the story of how you were skiing too fast for the conditions causing your right ski’s edge to catch, literally nearly killing or permanently disabling you.
This is certainly one of the most serious neck injuries I have encountered, right up there with the body surfing one that tore the disc away from the bone. The reason I can tell this in such detail is that I was the skier. It was my carelessness, my face (which explains a lot, right?), and it was my neck. Since joints are made of cartilage and cartilage has no blood supply, there is always some permanent damage from such an injury, but I underwent a fresh course of Intensive Care to heal the injury and minimize the damage, and then I returned to my normal Wellness Care. Even chiropractors need a good chiropractor.
You are lying on your back facing the sky and you immediately begin damage assessment. You are still alive. Good. You still feel your hands and feet. Better. You can move them. Best. Anything broken? You gingerly get up to your feet and quickly realize that you were in full view of the riders on the chairlift. It is a convention among skiers to cheer a spectacular fall as long as the person is not obviously hurt. You get your requisite cheers from your audience as they are appreciative of your fall, and that it was you and not them.
You find your skis, strap them on, and in a slightly dizzy state limp down to the ski lodge where your spouse and child are waiting for you. This was the planned last run. You decided you are going to downplay your fall, but the first thing they say to you as their faces convey a look of shock is, “What happened to you?” How did they know, you wonder? What gave it away? Was it the look in your eyes? “Why do you ask?” “You have blood all over your face,” they explode. It turns out that the ice crystals in the snow cut the skin all over your face so not only do you have a severe neck injury, but your face is going to scab over in the next few days so everyone will be staring at you asking, “What happened to you?” So over and over you will be forced to tell the story of how you were skiing too fast for the conditions causing your right ski’s edge to catch, literally nearly killing or permanently disabling you.
This is certainly one of the most serious neck injuries I have encountered, right up there with the body surfing one that tore the disc away from the bone. The reason I can tell this in such detail is that I was the skier. It was my carelessness, my face (which explains a lot, right?), and it was my neck. Since joints are made of cartilage and cartilage has no blood supply, there is always some permanent damage from such an injury, but I underwent a fresh course of Intensive Care to heal the injury and minimize the damage, and then I returned to my normal Wellness Care. Even chiropractors need a good chiropractor.