‘Freak’ slipper fall lands mum on operating table

A DUNDEE mum has been left with two metal plates in her neck after she fell down the stairs while attempting to place her foot in a slipper.

Sam Thomson, 43, from Douglas, said the “freak accident” could have left her paralysed.

After Sam had fallen, her son Martin found her in the heap on the floor and the mother-of-two was rushed to Ninewells Hospital by her husband Darren.

A CT scan revealed damage to her facet-joint. These joints allow your vertebrae to move smoothly against each other.

The C7 is a nerve root which branches off from the spinal cord and travels down the arm to enable sensation to travel from the neck down to other parts of the body.

Sam, who is a one-on-one care worker, originally thought she had damaged her collar bone.

She said: “It was all a bit of blur in the immediate aftermath of the accident.

“My slipper had come loose and I had twisted sideways to put it back on before I fell.

“Darren drove me up to Ninewells and after scans they discovered my C6 had twisted underneath my C7 — the doctors told me it was a displaced fracture.

“If I’d sneezed on the journey up or turned the wrong way I could have been paralysed. I’m just so lucky.”

After X-rays were taken, Sam was placed into a neck brace.

She was given two choices — to be placed in a head brace with weights or to keep the neck brace on before they could perform emergency surgery.

She said: “Although the incident happened on October 5, the emergency surgery had to take place five days later because of the swelling on my neck.”

The five-and-a-half hour surgery saw Sam have two metal plates inserted into her neck at the front and the back.

She said: “I’ve spent more than two weeks in ward 23B and I couldn’t speak highly enough of the care I received in the neurosurgery ward — the NHS has been fantastic.

“The metal plates will be a permanent reminder of what has happened.

“I still have limited movement in my neck but through ongoing physiotherapy I should be back to work within three months.

“It’s been a freak accident. Suffice to say the slippers have been binned.”