Modern medicine is pretty impressive these days, but a US woman would have been forgiven for giving up hope after suffering a freak injury which left her head 'decapitated'.
Of course, full blown decapitation is always fatal, but Megan King nearly lost her life to an internal decapitation which occurred after a sport related accident when she was just 16.
The Illinois woman, who is now 35, was playing football and fell when she was jumping for the ball, which led to her injuring her right ankle and spine and tearing the muscle off both her shoulder blades.
After 22 surgeries, doctors still weren't able to figure out why her body wasn't healing, and eventually she was diagnosed with hypermobile Ehler's-Danlos syndrome (hEDS) in 2015.
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hEDS is a genetic disorder that stops collagen, a key joint tissue, from forming properly and leads to joint instability.
While the rare disorder can mean that some people can become extremely flexible, it was the opposite for Megan who has been left living the life of a 'human statue' after her condition worsened and an emergency surgery was required.
She was forced to wear a restrictive 'halo brace' following her neck dislocating, which included having screws placed inside her skull to keep her from moving.
But when a doctor removed the brace, her skull became disconnected from her spine in what is known as an 'internal decapitation' - also known as an atlanto-occipital dislocation.
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Speaking to the Daily Mail, she said: “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.
“It was a horror show. I woke up unable to move my head at all."
Internal decapitation has a 70 percent fatality rate, according to Real Clear Science, so Megan was very lucky to survive the incident.
A further 15 surgeries has meant that her body is now fused from her skull to her pelvis, though she is unable to move her head in any direction.
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She added: “I’m literally a human statue. My spine doesn’t move at all. But that doesn’t mean I’ve stopped living."
Despite her limited movement over the last two decades, she is now able to finally return to some of the activities she enjoyed as a teenager, including a recent successful trip to a bowling alley.
She concluded: “I bowled a strike — on my very first try. My friends screamed and clapped and cheered like wild. They weren’t just celebrating the strike. They were celebrating everything I’ve survived.
“I’m still learning what my new body can do. It’s not easy, but I’m adapting. And I’m always surprised by what I can still accomplish.”
James Moorhouse