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Swede with broken neck sent home on painkillers

A man from northern Sweden was sent home from his local clinic with a handful of painkillers, after falling down the stairs of his house and smashing his head through a door in December last year.

When the ambulance arrived the man was asked to walk to the vehicle himself and travelled to the clinic without a neck brace, the man wrote in his report according to local paper Länstidningen.

The doctors at the clinic twisted and turned the man’s head in all directions during the examination, finally concluding that he must be suffering from a severe muscle sprain in the neck.

However, as his neck pain wouldn’t go away and he became dizzy when standing up, the man went back to the doctor’s surgery, where his arm and shoulder were x-rayed. He was then sent home with some painkillers, reports the paper.

Three weeks went by in the same fashion before the man gave up and went for a new consult at a different clinic. While there, his neck was finally x-rayed and after the images had been examined, the man was sent to nearby larger town Östersund.

At the Östersund clinic, he was told that the injuries were too complex to be treated there and the man was told to hold completely still, as the vertebral column was unstable.

According to the doctors at the Umeå hospital where the man was sent next, his neck was in fact broken.

The man had been very lucky, however, as his neck only remained in position when he was lying down.

Every time he moved or sat up his vertebral column moved three centimetres, which is enough to risk causing paralysis, according to the paper.

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