HORROR INJURY FOR RUGBY PLAYER
Pwllheli outside-half had emergency surgery on dislocated spine:
ANORTH Wales rugby player who suffered a serious spinal injury on the field is now recovering at home.
Pwllheli RFC player Mathew Parry was just 35 minutes into a match at Bethesda in Division One on September 15 when disaster struck.
He spent 90 minutes on the ground waiting for an ambulance and was taken to Ysbyty Gwynedd in Bangor with a significant neck and spine injury, before being transferred to the Royal University Hospital, Stoke, forfor specialistspecialist treatment, Wales OnlineOnline reports.
The 35-year-oldold scaffolder under-rwent emergencyy surgery to fuse bones and insert a plate into the top of his spine after it was discovered that he hadd dislocated the C6C6 and C7 vertebrae inin his neck – the partart ofof the spine that providesvides thethe neck with structuralral supportsupport andand flexibility. He also chipped part of the C5 vertebrae.
Doctors are unable to tell the Pwllheli RFC outside-half if the feeling he has lost in the left side of his upper body will ever return. His rugby career, however, is definitely over.
Now, just over a fortnight from near catastrophe on the rugby field, he is back home, but has been told the road ahead is long.
His fiancée Lynne Ellis said: “Mathew is in a lot of pain and will be in a neck brace for at least the next six months.
“At the moment he is struggling to sleep because the pain is so bad.
“He is down at the moment and it is going to be difficult for him to come to terms with the fact he can’t do what he loves doing after this.”
She added: “The doctors couldn’t believe how close he was to being quadriplegic. They warned us when he went in for the operation that it could still go wrong and that he could come out of it paralysed. It was very scary.
“They can’t tell us what is going to happen, we just have to wait and see. They don’t know if he will recover the feeling in his left side because of all the nerve damage.”
Within seconds of the blow he took to the neck, Parry and those in attendance as Pwllheli played at thethe homehome ofof hhis former club BethesdaBethesda RFC, knew somethsomething was wrong. ““MathewM is a very toutough player. He nenever stays down when he gets hurt. He tried to get up but knew ththat something wwas really wrong”, LyLynne said. “The phyphysio and the doctodoctor ran on to the pitchpitch aand I stayed on thethe sidelinsideline initially. Then II sawsaw someonesomeone pullp out a mobile phone and I knew it was very serious.
“I went on to the pitch and the doctor told me it was serious. Mathew’s voice was going which was one of the symptoms of his injury.
“We had to wait 90 minutes for the ambulance and we called three times to say ‘this is serious’, but they couldn’t get there any quicker.”
Friend Matt Harrington has set up a fundraising page for Mathew, who now faces an uncertain future. More than £4,200 has already been raised at the time of writing, with further collections and raffles planned by Pwllheli RFC and the local rugby community.