A 41-year-old cyclist is recovering at home less than a week after an accident that left her handlebars embedded 10cm into her stomach. Claire van Schaik, of Havelock North, was in a cycle lane on Napier Road, just seconds away from home, when a four-wheel-drive turned into her path and knockedher off her bike. ``She (the driver) clipped me...I hit my head on the road and somehow the whole bike and handlebars turned. That's when the handlebar went in,'' Ms van Schaik told The New Zealand Herald. ``I tried to get up but fell back down with abdominal pain. I just thought it was the force of the bike hitting me, not realising I'd been punctured.'' Members of the public rushed to her aid, including a nurse friend Lisa McGhee. Ms Schaik said did not realise the extent of her injuries until she heard firefighters talking about cutting the handlebars away. ``While that was all happening I thought, `Maybe I have a bit of the bike there'. When they were talking about it I realised something was wrong.'' Before going into surgery, Ms Schaik asked Ms McGhee to take pictures of her injuries. Viewing them later, she was shocked that such a blunt object could cause so much damage. ``It wasn't fast because (the driver) came down the road slow but it was the position and everything. It was just the force of the car and the road to do something like that,'' she said. The mother of nine-year-old twins was thankful to be alive and believed the crash was a freak accident. ``If you happened to fall the same way you wouldn't have done that. It was just the force and the way I hit road...and I didn't go flying across the road.''
