RAF officer served for a year with traumatic spinal injuryRSS Feed

An RAF officer with a broken neck dismissed his injuries as a pulled muscle and continued to serve for almost a year before finding out the truth.

Senior Officer Stephen Brunell, 41, from South Wales, suffered severe spinal injury after falling down a 12 ft ravine while trying to escape suspected terrorists near Kabul.

Despite hitting his head during the fall, Mr Brunell dismissed the injury as a pulled muscle or trapped nerve and ignored the pain for most of a year.

Talking to the Daily Telegraph, the officer said: "I just got on with doing my job - it was only months later when I started dropping things that I started to worry a bit and my wife finally persuaded me to go to a doctor.

"The doctor said he was amazed that I was able to walk at all - let alone complete a tour of Afghanistan."

This comes after reports by Duke University and the University of North Carolina that narcotics and diagnostic testing are used too much to treat neck pain.

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Posted by Timothy Walters
 

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