The Wellington teenager who tumbled 100m down a cliff almost two months ago has had further emergency neck surgery.
Max Hurd suffered a broken neck, five fractures in his back, extensive bruising and brain damage after the accident on December 5, the day after his 17th birthday, on the Deliverance Cove track, in Wairarapa.
A CT scan this month revealed a disc had collapsed and his neck was healing incorrectly.
Doctors removed the crushed disc, replacing it with a bone graft taken from a cadaver, and put a metal plate in front of the damaged vertebrae to hold them in place.
The young man will spend six more weeks recovering in a soft brace before he finds out if he can remove his neck collar for good.
