Can a decapitated head be reattached? Unthinkable achieved as woman’s spine detaches from skull after horrific accident

An Illinois woman has shared how doctors were able to reattach her “internally decapitated” skull back to her body by performing a complicated surgery.

Megan King was only 16 when she was playing football in 2005 and jumped to catch the ball, which resulted in a fateful fall. Her spine and right ankle were damaged, while muscles on both her shoulder blades suffered tears.

After spending over a year on crutches, the teenager expected her symptoms to subside. But the opposite happened.

According to a report by DailyMail, King saw her joints getting weakened, her muscles beginning to tear and her shoulder blades in unbearable pain.

What happened to Megan King?

Over multiple years, Megan King had to undergo 22 surgeries on just her shoulder blades, as doctors were left puzzled as to why her body won't heal.

In 2015, a decade after her fall, King was diagnosed with hypermobile Ehler's-Danlos syndrome (hEDS), a genetic disorder that stops proper collagen production in the body, causing joint instability.

Head ‘decapitated’ internally, doctors perform surgery

A year later, Megan King suffered a neck dislocation and she was fitted with a Halo brace, a painful device that is screwed directly into the skull to keep the neck from moving.

But the woman suffered a deadly condition called internal decapitation or Atlanto-occipital dislocation (AOD) as doctors tried to remove the Halo brace, which resulted in her neck getting almost detached from her spine.

King was immediately rushed into the emergency surgery room, where doctors were able to fuse her skull back on to her spine.

“I flew my chair back to keep gravity from decapitating me. My neurosurgeon had to hold my skull in place with his hands. I couldn't stand. My right side was shaking uncontrollably,” the 35-year-old was quoted as saying by DailyMail.

Calling the surgery a ‘horror show’, King said she could not move her neck at all.

With 37 surgeries now, Megan King has her bones in her spine fused from her skull to all the way down to her pelvis. A spinal fusion involves joining together two or more vertebrae (spinal bones) to keep them from moving.

This means King can no longer shift her head up, down, left or right.

“I'm literally a human statue. My spine doesn't move at all. But that doesn't mean I've stopped living,” she said.

King is now slowly getting back to her hobbies, trying to lead a normal life.

AOD is a fatal disease, with a 90 per cent death rate and is itself a rare condition.