“Hang on a minute, am I dead?”
Toni was driving along a country road when an uninsured driver hit her at high speed. The impact was devastating. Toni was told she might never use the lower half of her body again.
I remember seeing pinpoint headlights in the distance and then the next thing there was just an enormous explosion – that’s the only way I can describe it.
"It was just glass and noise and heat and smoke and the smell… I just didn’t know what had happened.”
Unable to feel anything, a frightening thought crossed her mind. “‘Hang on a minute, am I dead?’ I thought to myself.”
She soon realised she was alive, but then the seriousness of her situation and the pain she was in, hit her.
“I thought, ‘I’m just going to bloody die on this road.’ I can’t describe the pain.”
When Toni, a registered nurse and trained anaesthetist, was taken to hospital, doctors discovered the extent of her injuries. She had five pelvic fractures, several open wounds, broken ribs and the skin on her hand was almost degloved. She also had serious spinal damage.
“That’s when they said to me that it was 50/50 whether I would actually regain any function in the lower part of my body.”
Despite the odds, Toni was determined to recover. “I was actually in hospital for a month. They’d planned for me to be in for longer than that, but I was absolutely certain that I would be out for my 50th birthday.”
Although she made it home, daily life changed dramatically.
“For about three months I wasn’t allowed to bend down for fear of knackering the metal work, so I had to have all these adjustments that I’d never thought of; all these things that I couldn’t do.”
The other driver died at the scene. That driver wasn’t insured and Toni thought she wouldn’t get any compensation at all. Then her solicitor told her about MIB.
“They just took over and sorted everything out. It was like private healthcare. I saw a physio every week for months and months. And I had so many investigations for years after the accident – urology, colorectal, gynaecology, orthopaedic, neurology…all of these things were just completely taken care of.”
Looking back, Toni knows how important that support was.
“I think if I hadn’t had MIB’s support, I would have really struggled. I wouldn’t even know that half of the services and things that I had were available.”
Every year, MIB helps thousands of people affected by uninsured and hit‑and‑run driving get the support they need to rebuild their lives.
