Lisa and Mark Rendell. Lisa survived horrific injuries after she was hit by a logging truck in Woodhill Forest. She will tell her story to emergency doctors this week. Photo / Supplied
Lisa and Mark Rendell. Lisa survived horrific injuries after she was hit by a logging truck in Woodhill Forest. She will tell her story to emergency doctors this week. Photo / Supplied
GRAPHIC WARNING
It was an accident that could have left her completely paralysed. Outdoor adventurer Lisa Rendell was 27 when she was hit by a logging truck while motocross riding through Woodhill Forest in Auckland.
Her injuries were so severe doctors put her into an induced coma with a halo brace to prevent paralysis and debated whether to amputate her left leg from above the knee.
But they decided to try to save her leg. And now Rendell will share her incredible story of survival and recovery with doctors at the Australasian College For Emergency Medicine symposium in Rotorua this week.
On the day of the accident 17 years ago, Rendell was riding ahead of two friends when she came to a narrow gravel road and paused to check her front tyre.
"A logging truck came barrelling down the road. He [the driver] swerved hard to the left but the logging truck trailer jack-knifed out and swooped me up."
The impact flung Rendell, who was wearing protective gear and a helmet, 50 metres down the road into a fence post, crushing the bike's radiator on to her left thigh and breaking her tibia, fibula and ankle and smashing off the kneecap.
She also fractured her C1 and C2 vertebrae at the top of her neck on impact with the post and suffered a broken arm, fractured cheek and other injuries including a compound fracture.
Lisa Rendell shortly after she was hit by a logging truck in 2002. Photo / Supplied
Rendell's friends Harley Taylor and Craig Fountain, helped by passers-by John Nick and Dene Humphrey, administered life-saving first aid when they came across the horrific scene.
Fountain made a tourniquet from the strap on his riding goggles to stem the blood loss from her leg and Taylor dashed to a spot where he could get cellphone reception to call 111.
Rendell was rushed via air ambulance to Auckland Hospital where emergency doctors sedated her and inserted a breathing tube. "After being stabilised and transferred to the intensive care unit for a short period, I was taken to theatre where the surgeon used 21 litres of saline to wash out my contaminated knee wound."
Over the course of the next few days Rendell was treated with a pulsed lavage, a form of mechanical hydrotherapy that uses a pressurised solution to remove damaged tissue and clean out a wound.
"So there was a lot of talk of amputation but they wanted to talk to my parents."
Lisa Rendell's leg after the first skin grafts. Photo / Supplied
Rendell's father flew from England and her mother arrived at the hospital to tell doctors their daughter was an active, outdoor adventurer and they wanted to save her leg.
After eight days in intensive care Rendell was moved to a ward and eventually awoke from her coma.
She discovered her horrendous reality including that doctors had taken a large skin graft from her bottom and covered her mangled thigh with it.
"The graft would not take and ended up festering. The smell after only a few hours, of rotting skin was repulsive.
"Every day I was getting my dressings changed, they would rip a little piece of my skin graft off. The infection would just be so disgusting."
Rendell was in hospital for three and a half months and had further surgeries to insert metal rods in her arm and lower leg.
When she left she weighed less than 40kg and could barely walk.
Lisa Rendell's leg has healed with lots of plastic surgery. Doctors initially considered amputating it. Photo / Supplied
Rendell spent two years rehabilitating and underwent multiple plastic surgeries including moving fat from her good leg to even up the size of the left thigh, which now features a long scar.
The Jackson Allison Medical and Surgical sales rep is now 44 and lives in Rotorua with her husband.
Her presentation to the symposium on Thursday aims to show emergency doctors the miracle of their work.
"I'm 95 per cent recovered. I have a little drop foot that you don't notice with shoes on. But I snowboard and mountain bike and came fourth at the Xterra triathlon recently."
