Mountain bike crash leaves boy paralysed
Cooper Snowdon knew it was bad as soon as he came off his bike.
The 16-year-old was mountain biking with his older brother, Geordie, at Kowhai Park in Whanganui on March 21 when he went over a jump awkwardly, landed on his head and broke his neck.
A week later he is still in a critical condition on life support in the intensive care unit at Christchurch Hospital with uncertainty surrounding whether he will ever breathe on his own again, let alone walk.
“They’d been mountain biking all day and had an awesome day. He went over a jump and fell off,” mother Kim Ostern said.
“I just happened to call [Geordie] then and he answered the phone and said, ‘Coops had an accident’. He said, ‘it’s bad, it’s really bad’.”
Ostern raced to the park to be by her son’s side.
“He said to his brother, ‘I can’t feel my legs or arms’. He knew. He just knew. He kept telling me he was scared.”
Cooper was taken to Whanganui Hospital by ambulance, where he was rushed in for scans and the decision was made to fly him to Christchurch Hospital for specialist treatment.
Doctors told his family his C3, C4 and C5 vertebrae were damaged in the accident which would affect his ability to move any of his limbs or even breathe.
“They don’t know if he’s going to be able to breathe for himself, he might have to be ventilated for the rest of his life,” Ostern said. “It’s really early days but they’ve been extremely clear with us that his paralysis is permanent and it’s full paralysis from the neck down.”
He has had an operation to put plates into his neck so he can be moved without further damage and today had a tracheotomy so doctors could remove the breathing tube from his throat and slowly wean him off the sedatives to find out how bad the damage is.
Cooper and Geordie had moved from Tauranga to Whanganui to be with their mum just four days before the accident.
Ostern said her son was not particularly interested in academia but was always active so she worried about how he would cope.
“It’s devastating. I’m worried about how my boy’s going to manage. If I could be in his place I would be. I can’t even imagine what it’s like for him.”
Ostern said he was a popular but strong-willed young man who always insisted on doing things his way and refused to wear a helmet despite her best attempts.
Family friend Antonia Rogers has set up a Givealittle page. It would help pay for living and travel expenses for the family — who all lived in the North Island, so they could be by Cooper’s side to support him.
Rogers said Cooper was a “beautiful kid”.