North Queensland prop Griffin Neame has opened up on the terrifying throat injury he suffered earlier in the season, admitting he was “really nervous” sitting on the bench worried that he would cop another knock in his comeback game last week.
The 22-year-old was rushed to hospital following the Round 6 loss to the Dolphins after he copped two knocks to the throat while making tackles which left him short of breath and in severe pain.
Neame played through the injury but realised there was something very wrong as the adrenaline wore off in the sheds.
Club officials put him in ambulance where doctors discovered he’d suffered a fractured cricoid, which is cartilage in the throat that helps with the integrity of the airways.
“It was very scary,” Neame said after he made a successful return off the bench last week.
“I got elbowed in the centre of the throat and my breath just went away straight away. I couldn’t breathe, I was dry retching and I was trying to get as much air as I could.
“After a few minutes it started to slowly come back but it was really painful. I didn’t want to think about it too much so I kept playing, but then I got hit again in the second half and the pain went through the roof.
“There was about 10 minutes to go so I wanted to stay out there but it was so painful and it’s something I never thought I’d go through.
“As soon as the adrenaline wore off, I sat down in the sheds and the pain just got worse and worse.
“I was finding it harder to breathe so they put me straight in an ambulance and I went to hospital. They put me on a drip and pumped me with medical stuff to make the swelling go down.
“I had no voice for two days and it was sore to talk, sore to eat and sore to do anything for the first two weeks. I couldn’t do any training so it took me a while to build my fitness up again when I got back.”
Neame spent a week in hospital and then went back to New Zealand to stay with his parents, revealing he didn’t tell his mum about the injury when it first happened because he was worried how she would react.
He was on a liquid diet for nearly two weeks which saw him lose four kilos, but he didn’t lose any of his strength in a solid return against the Eels where he played 46 minutes in the middle.
While he was happy to be back on the field, Neame doesn’t want to think about what might happen if he gets hit in the throat again after surviving a few nervy moments last week.
“It was tough. I was quite nervous to start, very nervous actually,” he said.
“I was really nervous sitting on the bench. All I could think about was getting hit again.
“I was quite cautious for the first few tackles I made, but after a while I sort of forgot about it which is a good thing because I didn’t want to be worrying about it for the whole game. It felt fine when I was running and tackling which was great.
“Fingers crossed I don’t get hit again.”
