Colorado man is critically ill after surviving internal decapitation that separated his skull from his spine during dirt bike crash, as surgeons fused them back together

A Colorado man is fighting for his life after a dirt bike accident left him with internal decapitation.

Brandon Causey was riding his dirt bike along the trails of Gypsum in the Vail Valley on Monday when he was found unconscious on the road.

The father of three was transported by Flight for Life to St. Mary’s Hospital in Grand Junction, where he underwent CT and MRI scans that revealed the extent of his injuries.

Doctors discovered that Causey suffered a rare injury called an atlanto-occipital dislocation, known as internal decapitation, meaning the ligaments between his skull base and spine separated.

“The fact that he is still alive is, in the doctor’s words, ‘an absolute miracle,'” his daughter Ciera Causey said at a news conference. GoFundMe page.

Beloved chef and ski instructor Brandon Causey (right) was internally decapitated in a dirt bike accident on Monday

‘He also suffered multiple fractures to other vertebrae in his neck and to his ribs, which caused one of his lungs to partially collapse.

‘In addition, he has diffuse but small hemorrhages in his brain, which means that this brain injury is traumatic. “Brandon has been chemically anesthetized and paralyzed throughout this process due to the severity and life-threatening nature of these injuries,” Ciera said.

Causey underwent a five-and-a-half-hour operation on Tuesday during which doctors were able to fuse his skull and spine back together.

‘However, we are not out of the woods yet. The doctor stated that his condition is obviously extremely fluid, and it is a miracle that he is still here with us,” Ciera said.

‘They will try to wake him up tomorrow and then continue with brain imaging and an assessment of his collapsed lung. Whether he will need surgery for any of these things has yet to be determined.

“His prognosis so far has been, ‘I don’t know.'”

Details about the cause of the crash are unclear as he made the dirt bike ride alone.

Causey was riding his dirt bike along the trails of Gypsum in the Vail Valley on Monday when he was found unconscious on the road.

His daughter Ciera Causey described her father as “very sympathetic, very kind, funny, charismatic”

‘It’s a miracle he’s still alive. His injury is crazy. The people who sustain these types of injuries don’t really make it to the point where they need surgery,” Ciera said KDVR.

“There’s a plate that they use for the merger for the operation and they actually sent that back to their career service because they couldn’t use it, because they haven’t performed this operation in, I don’t you know, a decade.”

Causey is a beloved member of the Vail Valley community, having worked for many years as a chef at Vail resorts and as a ski instructor for Beaver Creek Ski School.

“He’s best friends with, I think, everyone in the Vail Valley. We walked around with him and he knew five to 15 people wherever we went,” Ciera said.

“He’s very likable, very kind, funny, charismatic and quite a big name in the valley just because of his reach.”