‘I knew something catastrophic had happened . . . It has destroyed my life’

A man walked into hospital after a fall from an e-scooter and left as a tetraplegic in what doctors say was ‘tragic’, ‘exceptionally rare’ and ‘almost certainly unpreventable’. Caroline Williams reports.

Wagih Bassalious is a proud man. The 71-year-old engineer has a pile of degrees and post-graduate diplomas achieved over 26 years of study and training in countries such as France, Japan, the Netherlands and his homeland, Egypt, where he immigrated from in 1999.

Outside his work, Bassalious put those qualifications to good use, helping his church and community fix things up. He loved to cook for his family, sew, knit, fix electronics and make DIY improvements around their home.

But now, he requires help from his family and carers to do almost anything, including to flick through the qualifications he worked so hard for.

In May 2020, Bassalious broke his neck after he fell from an e-scooter he had been fixing near his home in Auckland’s Unsworth Heights.

Despite his sore neck and bleeding forehead, Bassalious picked himself up off the ground, knelt down to pick up his glasses and walked home, where he washed the blood off his face and changed his clothes. All of this he managed unassisted.

He was then dropped off at North Shore Hospital by his wife. The steps he took walking into the emergency department would be among his last, and the scrolling of social media and texts he sent during his five-hour wait for a CT scan would be the last time he would move his fingers.

As he lay down for the CT scan, fractures in his neck injured his spinal cord, which prompted his body to move involuntarily and the lower half went numb. The pain was ‘‘like a knife going into my back’’, he said.

‘‘I knew something catastrophic had happened to me. I lost everything after that.’’

The incident robbed Bassalious of his fine motor skills, meaning he cannot work or use his engineering skills to help his community as he once thrived, which was ‘‘killing him’’, he said through tears. ‘‘It has destroyed my life.’’ Despite taking medication four times daily, Bassalious is in pain most of the time and experiences involuntary body spasms.

‘‘It is really very awful pain,’’ he said, adding that he felt like he was a prisoner in his own body.

He never expected that after walking into hospital with no mobility issues, he wouldn’t be able to walk out again.

Bassalious has ankylosing spondylitis, a condition that causes neck stiffness and puts those with it at higher risk of fractures and spinal cord injuries. Before his injury he would require neck support when lying down. He ponders whether having similar support as he lay down for his CT scan would have prevented his paralysis, which he said he asked for multiple times.

Waitemata¯ DHB chief medical officer Dr Jonathan Christiansen said Bassalious suffered severe injuries from his accident and ‘‘it was only a matter of time’’ until his spinal cord was affected.

A review into his care stated that the only way paralysis could have been avoided was if no CT scan was taken, which would have ‘‘inevitably’’ led to a similar spinal cord injury later on as a ‘‘natural consequence’’ of the neck fracture.

An adverse event investigation report recommended the hospital’s radiology department create protocols on CT scan positioning for patients with spine deformities like Bassalious’. However, it also stated that there were no proven methods of doing so.

Christiansen said the development of such protocols would benefit all New Zealand hospitals, and that it was the adverse event report’s purpose to identify opportunities for improvements across the health sector.

Both the review and adverse event report found national best practice was followed during Bassalious’ care at North Shore Hospital. ‘‘... There are no actions that could have prevented the out

come for Mr Bassalious,’’ Christiansen said.

It was without doubt he had suffered life-changing consequences resulting from his injury, Christiansen said, adding that he sympathised with him and his family.

While Bassalious takes the brunt of the physical pain, his family were also going through ‘‘agony’’. It is they who keep him going, he said, especially his daughter’s identical 3-year-old twin girls and a new baby girl born on May 18.

His wife, Olfat Hefzallah, said the incident left her ‘‘psychologically traumatised’’ and ruined the couple’s plans to retire in Australia, where their daughter and son live. Most of all, she was ‘‘heartbroken’’ for her husband, once a handyman who loved to fix things.