Health Notes, June 22nd 2008, by Sarah Stacey

Spinal Injuries

In April four years ago, everything was blooming for TV presenter Victoria Hollingsworth, then 26.  ‘I was really happy about my new job, filming for Channel 4’s A Place in the Sun in Spain.’  Then, suddenly , everything changed.  ‘We were driving to lunch on a gorgeous sunny day near Cordoba and there was a head-on collision’ says Victoria.  ‘I had that moment when your brain slows down: I thought “oh gosh, I’m in a major car accident”.’  The car rolled down a bank and Victoria, who’d briefly lost consciousness, came to.  ‘I couldn’t move because the car was squashed down on me [she was in the passenger seat behind the driver with her head out of the window] but I remember thinking “I’m still alive – but I’m in a lot of pain”.’ 

After the fire brigade cut her out, Victoria was put on a flat board and  airlifted to the Hospital Reina Sophia in Cordoba.  X-rays revealed she’d shattered three vertebrae at the bottom of her rib cage – ‘they were in shards, just like a Crunchie bar when you break it’ – broken five ribs, and punctured her lung.  ‘I was totally out of it. My parents are the ones I feel sorry for: they had the awful phone call saying their daughter had been in a terrible accident and there wasn’t much chance I would walk again.  The doctors said I ‘d be paralysed but they didn’t know to what degree.’

Miraculously – and Victoria uses the word advisedly – she was not paralysed.  ‘A most incredible surgeon took out every single fragment of bone and none had punctured the spinal column.’  During a nine hour operation, Dr Barrios Gonzalez put in two titanium rods and six screws.  ‘A little bit of rib was removed and  cells from that grafted on to a piece of mesh so they would grow and form extra bone on the spine, which it has.  It sounds like a Blue Peter job but it was amazing.’

When she came round from the anaesthetic, the surgeon asked Victoria to wiggle her toes.  ‘I could do it.  He said you’ll be allright, you won’t be paralysed - it will just take time.’ She says that curiously, due to the drugs, she never had to deal with the trauma of ‘properly’ taking on board the threat of paralysis, ‘whereas my parents did.  They just cried and cried. I couldn’t really understand it.’

Victoria’s cuts and bruises healed, although she had double vision for four months.  She returned home a month after the accident and, extraordinarily, was back at work in three months, albeit in a body brace from neck to hips which she took off for the camera.  ‘I had battles with my family, doctors and the production company – but having a goal was integral to my recovery.’

The experience left Victoria with what she calls ‘survivor guilt: I was so lucky.  Over 1,000 people have a spinal cord injury [SCI] every year to their back or neck, and more than 800 are paralysed.’  She has campaigned for better housing for people living with SCI, through the charity Aspire (of which she’s a patron) and is now spreading the word about a new online social networking community called MySpine.org, launched by the charity Spinal Research. ‘The website offers a place for people who can’t get out easily to swop stories and feel they belong.  Many people say they feel completely isolated as they face up to their injury.  When I was recovering, I went surfing online for stories of other people who’d been through similar experiences.  My parents found it comforting too: nothing in our lives like this had ever happened and it did make it easier.’

For more details, www.myspine.org.

Sweet treat for sore throats

A friend with such a sore throat she could only utter a few, very husky words told me about Green Bay Manuka Honeysucker lozenges, which made an immediate difference. While not cheap, these are a convenient, effective – and delicious - remedy for sore throats and tired voices.  £3.95 for eight lozenges, from Waitrose, health stores nationwide and Victoria Health, www.victoriahealth.com.

Green baby website wins praise

My colleague Victoria, who has just had her second baby, recommends the website, www.greenbaby.co.uk: ‘it’s brilliant - my first stop for organic and chemical free products, at affordable prices.  It’s well worth spending on a natural mattress as babies sleeps for hours with their nose pressed to it.  I also like the non-pvc toys, eco-nappies and baby powder with essential oils and arrowroot.’

Book of the week: IBS for Dummies

Written by three experts, Drs Patricia Macnair, Carolyn Dean and medical researcher and IBS sufferer Christine Wheeler, this guide to understanding and effectively treating a very common problem manages to be comprehensive, easy to follow, hugely informative – and even quite funny (which is refreshing with health books…).

To order a copy of IBS for Dummies (published by Wiley) for £10.39 from www.amazon.co.uk, just click here.