Neighbours star Madeleine West has shared a graphic photo of the injuries she sustained after being hit by a bus.
The actress, who plays Dee Bliss on the soap, shared the photo on Instagram and wrote: "Today I'm celebrating 18 years since being hit by a bus in the head... always wanted to be the kind of girl who stopped traffic. Just preferably not with my face."
West added that the photo was taken as she was on the path to recovery after the accident left her with three skull fractures leaking brain fluid, a cerebral haemorrhage and haematoma, "busted" teeth, broken capillaries and "endless nights of excruciating pain".
"You see, the way we look, as definitive as we think it is, actually makes up the tiniest portion of who we are," West wrote. "Yet if we take all we are, all we have to offer, our gifts, our personality, our ambitions, our dreams, and try to cram it into that tiny percentage, then how much will we miss out on?
"How much will the world miss out on? And what kind of world do we live in if everyone slices and dices the essence of who they are to allow their most definitive character trait to be their appearance?
"To all the girls and boys out there, desperately primping, pimping and punishing themselves, labouring to make themselves Insta-ready, editing those selfies, all for a world that tells them their nose doesn't seem to fit their face, that their butt is too big, those boobs are too small, where is your waist? Your perfect hair? Your perfect teeth? Your perfect mani-pedi? I call BS, and encourage you to as well," she continued.
On the Who Are You with Pete Timbs podcast, West went into detail about the incident.
"Evidently, a bus was travelling at speed … coming into the bus stop … and he just collected me as I turned right to look for the traffic lights," she said. "So the left side of my face splat on the windscreen.
A photo of Madeleine West shortly after her accident. Photo / News Corp Australia
"(It) put me in the air for a couple of feet and I landed on my face again on the same side and I scraped along the ground for a couple more feet, and then was kind of left there in the gutter."
To make matters worse, West was robbed while she lay unconscious.
"Someone stole my wallet ... so the paramedics couldn't ID me," she said. "It was actually two sex workers who were working in the vicinity who held me and stopped the bleeding on my head and called an ambulance."
