While Debbie Martin is adamant our Northern Rescue Helicopters are fantastic, she laughs when she says there are better ways to take in a view from a helicopter.
Debbie was walking her trusty six-year-old horse around her Dargaville arena when it suddenly bucked and threw her two metres into the air. Add to the fact it was 18 hands high, Debbie knew she was in trouble when she landed on her backside.
“I blew the front of my pelvis apart. A steel plate holds it together now. I also had an open back fracture where the back of my pelvis was badly cracked. I have had a couple of concussions in the past, but this is the first accident where I could not get up,” explains Debbie.
Her daughters heard her cries for help and proceeded to call 111. An ambulance was sent to scene and arrived at exactly the same time as the duty doctor from the Dargaville Medical Centre. Within minutes, a Northern Rescue Helicopter was also circling and subsequently flew Debbie to Whangārei Hospital.
After scans and x-rays, she was transported to the Northern Rescue Helicopter base at Kensington and flown to Auckland Hospital for more scans and x-rays. That was on a Wednesday.
“By midnight I had been through 12 bed and stretcher moves and I was over it. The pain was bloody awful.”
Debbie was not operated on until the following Monday and two days later was transported to Whangārei Hospital for a four day stay before completing her six-week hospital recovery in Dargaville – five of those weeks on her back.
“The haematomas were pretty awesome. I had bruising and swelling for three months. My internal organs were really shaken up.”
After ten months of recovery and rehabilitation, Debbie finally returned to work driving milk tankers for Fonterra. Twelve months after the accident she was back to nine-hour days and driving up to 300-400km in a shift, but her body is still pretty tender some days.
As for horse riding, she has firmly retired and her bucking horse (it had never bucked before) has gone to a new home.
But she is forever grateful for the care she received from the Northern Rescue Helicopter crew.
