As hard as it was, Jack McSweeney had to forgive a misdiagnosis before he could move on with his life.
The 25-year-old had plenty of reason to feel angry. In 2006 he suffered a broken neck while playing club rugby in Waikato but it was not correctly diagnosed.
"It wasn'ta dirty tackle or anything like that but [former Chiefs lock] Toby Lynn got me from behind and I went head first into the ground with both of our body weights," remembered the 33-year-old of his life-defining injury. "I came up a little bit dazed but I felt like I was all good and carried on."
McSweeney played for another 20 minutes but knew something wasn't quite right. He was told that he had sustained a minor neck strain and that he needed to "harden up".
"Six weeks after the injury, I went into a copybook tackle and tore the nerves out of my spine. That's when they found out I had a broken neck, which led to operation after operation."
As a result his left arm was amputated (twice) later that year. It was the hardest time of his life.
"I felt like they had ruined my life and it took me a long time to get past that. I was angry for a long time and that acted like a roadblock to my own healing."
He still has his struggles. His life is riddled by phantom pain.
