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Mikael Wikstrand has not played an ice hockey match since the SM gold with Färjestad two years ago.
Now the 30-year-old, with credentials from the WC and Olympics, reveals that he is retiring after a fatal medical miss.
– He told me that he has taken care of thousands of patients and that it has never gone so wrong, he tells VF.
During a quarter-final meeting with Skellefteå in April 2022, Mikael Wikstrand badly injures one knee.
Now, when the 30-year-old ends his career, he talks about the mistake that one of the doctors made during one of his numerous knee operations.
The initial verdict was “an injury to the internal ligament and meniscus” required an operation which was only carried out in June. Then the injury “would not be strange”, the knee would be “fixed” with a new internal ligament.
But something went wrong and the doctor “operated crookedly” which created cartilage damage in the knee.
However, the hill didn’t get to know anything about it himself.
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“Then I broke down”
He would complete his rehabilitation for four, five months. But the pain increased in a place in the knee where it “shouldn’t do it”, he tells VF.
The pain was said to be from scar tissue and was causing it to sting in some places and another operation was to be carried out in October.
– After the second operation, nothing was mentioned about what had gone wrong, then they tried to fix everything as much as possible without us finding out about it. The message I received was that the operation would extend my rehab time by two weeks – after that I could get on the regular rehab plan.
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When he tried to train again in December, it still hurt. Then they decided that the entire 2022/2023 season would go to waste.
– Then I broke down inside the medical team.
In February, he underwent another operation to repair the cartilage damage and the kneecap.
– Before that operation, the doctor came in and laid down flat. He told me that he had taken care of thousands of patients and that it had never gone so wrong. He took everything on himself, thought it was regrettable and sad that it had turned out the way it had.
Wikstrand: “Easy to spew bile”
The doctor nevertheless made another attempt at surgery together with a surgeon.
But it didn’t get better and Wikstrand is still in pain.
He has to live with the pain for the rest of his life.
– It’s easy to sit and spew bile over him now, think he’s the world’s biggest idiot. At the same time, it is the human factor that erred, and the higher you are in society, the greater the consequences of those mistakes. When I hit an “Indian”, it is also a mistake, the human factor will always strike. It would have been sad if it happened during a knee operation for anyone, but maybe even a little sadder that it happened to someone who needed his knee to practice his profession.
