Megan King, now 35 and from Illinois, has an extraordinary story about survival and resilience. At just 16 years old, a terrible injury during a football game changed her life dramatically. What she faced was a rare and life-threatening medical condition called internal decapitation, where the skull separates from the spine inside the body. Unlike complete decapitation, which is always fatal, internal decapitation has a shockingly high death rate of about 70%.
Her injury started when she fell while reaching for the ball, damaging her ankle, spine, and tearing muscles near her shoulders. Despite undergoing 22 surgeries over the years, doctors couldn’t figure out why she wasn’t healing properly. In 2015, she was diagnosed with hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos syndrome (hEDS), a rare genetic disorder affecting collagen that makes joints unstable. While some with hEDS are very flexible, Megan’s condition resulted in severe immobility.
The situation worsened, leading her to emergency neck surgery and the use of a halo brace—an external device attached to the skull to keep the head stable. Tragically, when the brace was removed prematurely, her skull internally detached from her spine. Megan described the chaos: her neurosurgeon had to physically hold her skull, and she lost control over her body, with uncontrollable shaking and complete inability to move her neck.
Megan underwent 15 additional surgeries after this internal decapitation. Today, her spine is fused from head to pelvis, leaving her unable to move or turn her head. She calls herself “a human statue,” but despite this, Megan refuses to let her disability define her.
Recently, she joyfully returned to a bowling alley for the first time since her teen years and bowled a strike on her first try, celebrating her ongoing survival and strength with her friends.
Although living with her “new body” is challenging, Megan continues to find ways to live fully and push her limits. She remains amazed at what she can still accomplish every day despite her limitations.
