Health: Cyclist praises medics after helmet saved her in nightmare crash
As A&E doctors worked on Rachel Burrows’s injuries, the consultant walked into the waiting area to talk to her husband Adrian.
The medic was carrying the smashed cycling helmet Rachel had been wearing when she crashed head-first into a tree on a country lane.
“The consultant gave my husband the helmet and said, ‘That has just saved your wife’s life,” Rachel says.
The helmet, which cost £80, is on the table in a meeting room at Birmingham University, where Rachel works as head of communications. She picks it up to show me the splits and cracks, testament to the jolting, 30mph impact with the tree. Rachel and Adrian were nearing the end of a 25-mile training ride on May 9 when they took a right-handed downhill bend just half a mile from their home in Bartley Green.
Rachel recalls: “I knew I didn’t have the right line. I knew I was potentially going to crash, but I didn’t know how spectacular it would be. I remember going towards the grass verge but I don’t remember what happened next. I woke up on the floor and wanted to get up. I didn’t think I had done that much damage.”
In fact, the 36-year-old had broken her back and Adrian’s quick actions undoubtedly stopped her from aggravating the injury. Having flown over her handlebars and struck the tree, she had rolled back towards the road. Adrian told his wife to lie still and made sure oncoming traffic was aware of the crash scene.
Rachel describes her childhood sweetheart – they met when they were 14 – as “my hero.” “In a short space of time he was doing traffic control, wife control and giving medical assistance,” she says.
Rachel is also fulsome in her praise for the medical team that cared for her in the immediate aftermath of the accident, paying tribute to the paramedics, the doctors and nurses at both Selly Oak and the Queen Elizabeth hospitals in Birmingham. She also speaks in glowing terms of the treatment, expertise and encouragement of all the staff at the Midlands Centre for Spinal Injuries at the Robert Jones and Agnes Hunt Orthopaedic Hospital in Oswestry, Shropshire.
But all of these efforts would have counted for nothing had it not been for the silver and red Las cycling helmet that Rachel bought at Echelon Cycles in Pershore, Worcs, a few years ago. She could have bought a cheaper one, for 30 or 40 quid, but chose the £80 model because it was a comfortable fit. It turned out to be the best investment of her life.
She recently wrote to the manufacturer of the helmet, which was ripped from her head by the impact, saying: “Thank you for saving my life.”
“I could have died,” Rachel tells me. “I feel that my helmet either saved my life or saved me from a very different life. I have no brain injury, no paralysis and I am alive to tell the tale. I am very lucky.”
Rachel’s experience means she has become a fierce advocate for the wearing of cycling helmets. She is incensed when she sees people riding their bikes without head protection. “They say it isn’t cool to wear a helmet,” says Rachel, exasperated. “What are they going on about? What’s being cool got to do with it?
“On campus the other day I saw a student cycling down a hill without a helmet – and he was talking on his mobile phone at the same time. Unbelievable. I could have screamed.”
Her own accident, she says, was down to human error, but she makes the point that people make mistakes all the time. Her message is: don’t think it won’t happen to you. Then there are all the other factors that cannot be controlled, such as cars appearing out of side roads or driveways. “I’ve had pheasants run in front of me before during rides in the country,” says Rachel.
She is equally passionate about the conservative management of spinal injuries. Although surgical intervention is often seen as a quick-fix, and cheaper, solution to back injuries such as Rachel’s there is another school of thought that suggests the body is equally good, in some cases better, at mending itself. All it needs is time, plenty of it.
Rachel was transferred from Birmingham to the Midlands Centre for Spinal Injuries five days after her crash. X-rays and CT and MRI scans had helped to diagnose that she had suffered a triple fracture to her L1 lumbar vertebrae. The nature of the break meant her spinal cord was in a vulnerable position. The vertebrae effectively had been “pancaked” flat by the shock of the head impact. There were also assorted open wounds and severe bruising but the broken back – and the technique for repairing it – was the overriding concern.
The options were spelled out for her by spinal injuries consultant Wagih Shafik El Masry, who has a clinical interest in spinal cord recovery following trauma. A former chairman of the British Association of Spinal Cord Injury Specialists, Mr El Masry laid out the cold facts (recovery times, success rates and risks) of both surgery and conservative care. He did so without any bias, says Rachel, who admits she was terrified by the prospect of going under the knife.
“The thought of a surgeon operating on unstable fractures around my spinal column was too much to bear, especially knowing that they’d probably have to go in from the front and the back,” says Rachel.
A surgical procedure meant the recovery time would be far quicker and she could be home in a fortnight. Statistically, the operation had a 98per cent success rate.
Rachel, though, was frightened of falling into the two per cent failure category and feared waking from the anaesthetic to discover she was paralysed.
In contrast, the conservative care system involves two main stages of recovery: four to six weeks of total bed-rest in hospital followed by six to eight weeks in a plaster-cast jacket, which is worn at home following discharge.
Rachel says: “For me, three months of my life for stages 1 and 2 of recovery was nothing compared with knowing that I’d walk again for the rest of my life. Conservative care is slower but has 100per cent success rate. Around 90per cent of people who are given that choice take the same route.”
She thought she could cope mentally with being immobile for several weeks. A new mobile phone allowed her to communicate via text, Twitter and the internet with the outside world. She also started writing a blog from her bed, staring at the ceiling in a prone position.
Rachel amassed a string of fascinating facts and figures about her treatment. The project gathered pace when Republicans in the United States attacked the NHS as a way of criticising Barack Obama’s plans for health care reform.
Rachel hit back from her bed, flagging up the fact that her treatment had been provided by 106 dedicated health workers and nine volunteers: a total of 115.
She also recorded more idiosyncratic details – that she wore 40 different NHS standard issue hospital gowns (in four different designs); ate 111 hospital meals; watched 101 episodes of The West Wing; and went 85 days without a shower (32 before her cast was fitted, 53 before it was removed).
Rachel’s recovery has gone so well that she has agreed to become a pin-up girl – for conservative care. She has been filmed carrying out various physical tasks and the video will be shown to medics as an object lesson in the benefits of leaving the body to heal itself.
