Michelle's Story

It’s race day in Beachlands. Michelle and her friend Kim are on their bikes tackling an Adventure Race - navigating mountain bike trails, trekking through native bush and hunting for orienteering checkpoints.

They’re over halfway through the course and they’re having a fantastic day.

Torrential rain the day before had made the clay trails slick and unpredictable, so they’ve been riding cautiously. Whenever a section feels beyond their ability, they simply hop off their bikes and walk.

Then they reach one tight uphill corner. Kim is up ahead. Michelle makes a split-second decision.

“I thought, ‘Kim’s made it around, I’ll give it a go.’ Unfortunately, I didn’t.”

The edge of the track gives way beneath her. One moment she’s riding.

The next she’s somersaulting down a steep drop.

“I landed on my upper back with my head underneath me and heard a huge crunch. Then I kept rolling into the bush.”

Michelle comes to rest six metres below the trail, her bike landing below her stopping her from tumbling further.

She tries to move but the pain is unbearable.

“I knew immediately I’d done something to my neck.” Michelle says.

High above, Kim scrambles up the hillside searching for mobile reception. Once she finds a signal, she calls race organisers, who alert emergency services.

Michelle can do nothing but wait. For around 45 minutes she lies on the steep hillside, trying not to move. Every attempt sends searing pain through her neck and upper back.

When paramedics arrive, they told Michelle heard a crack when she fell. The terrain makes everything harder.

Firefighters rig ropes just to reach her. Northern Rescue’s critical care paramedic joins the team to assess the safest way to get her out and only later does Michelle realise just how inaccessible she was.

“It was only afterwards that I realised how difficult it was to reach me.”

Carefully immobilised on a sretcher, she’s carried up the bank by firefighters before being winched into the waiting Northern Rescue helicopter.

As the winch lifts away, Michelle opens her eyes and looks up the steep bank.

“I remember thinking, ‘No wonder I’m sore.’”

Within minutes she’s at Auckland City Hospital. The scans begin almost immediately.

Just two and a half hours after her fall, Michelle receives the news she’d been desperately hoping for. She hasn’t broken her neck.

“That was enormous.” She says.

The relief is overwhelming. Although she’d escaped spinal fractures, the fall had caused significant injuries to her neck, shoulder and upper back

But her recovery wasn’t over. Nearly three weeks later, during an appointment with a specialist,Michelle is asked if she’d checked her helmet. She hadn’t.

When she found it, a deep dent marked the helmet where her head had struck the ground.

Only then the concussion diagnosis was confirmed.

Three months later, that concussion remains the hardest part of her recovery.

Some days are good, others bring overwhelming fatigue, difficulty concentrating, cognitive difficulties,nausea and sensitivity to light.

“It’s not a linear recovery.You improve, then have setbacks. I’m getting there, but I’m not quite myself yet.”

Looking back, Michelle knows one thing with certainty.

Without Northern Rescue,reaching specialist care would have taken far longer.

“The helicopter meant I knew within hours that I was going to be okay. For me and my family, that made all the difference.”

She also credits her friend Kim, whose calm thinking and quick actions ensured help was on its way. Today,Michelle no longer feels “so stupid” to have caused so much fuss on that day.

“It was just a combination of circumstances - the rain, the slippery clay track and a split-second rider error decision. It was simply an accident.”

She’s not quite ready to get back on her mountain bike.

“My new motto is trails, not tracks,” she says.

Thanks to the coordinated efforts of race organisers, first responders, firefighters, ambulance crews and Northern Rescue, what could have been a devastating outcome became the beginning of her recovery.

Today, she’s still healing.

And she’s deeply grateful Northern Rescue was ready to answer the call.