‘I was afraid I was going to find her dead’
Renee Whitehouse doesn’t remember the crash that has temporarily left her without a piece of her skull.
A large scar now divides her head into two parts – one shaved and the other with long hair – following the surgery that saved her life.
‘‘I don’t really care about scars, I just want my hair to grow back,’’ the 26-year-old American said from her bed at Dunedin Hospital.
In the coming weeks, surgeons will hopefully reattach the piece of her skull damaged when she collided with a truck in the early hours of January 18.
She remembered finishing her bar-tending job, stopping at a shop for something to eat, then riding a Lime scooter on a protected cycle lane on the city’s one-way system.
‘‘I don’t remember crashing, I just remember getting into bed . . . but that’s my brain playing tricks on me.’’
Whitehouse, who moved to Dunedin last February to study marine archaeology at the University of Otago, said she had never used e-scooters until they were launched in the city eight days before the crash.
She was not wearing a helmet or using headphones, had not been drinking, and ‘‘wouldn’t run a red light’’.
She later found out she went under the New World-branded truck.
The cause of the crash is still under investigation.
Her Alaska-based mother, Jackie Whitehouse, said she had just flown into Seattle when she received a flood of messages about her daughter.
She returned home to Alaska before getting a long flight to New Zealand, arriving the day after the crash.
‘‘I had tried not to think what I was going to find; I was afraid I was going to find her dead.’’
‘‘When I saw her I was amazed how good she looked . . . I thought she would be all beat up.’’
Her daughter was a determined young woman and the hardest thing for her would be the slow recovery from her head injury.
Renee Whitehouse was later joined by her father, Rodney, who lives in Portland, Oregon.
The family praised New Zealand’s health system.
‘‘I would be screwed if I was in America . . . because I don’t have healthcare,’’ Renee Whitehouse said.
Doctors said her recovery would take months, but she said ‘‘nope’’.
Being stuck in a hospital was a ‘‘nightmare’’ for a person who enjoyed the outdoors.
She was already walking, exercising and continuing some of her work towards her thesis. ‘‘There is nothing I can’t do.’’ She urged all e-scooter users to ‘‘be cautious’’ and wear a helmet, and said companies like Lime should provide them.
Lime scooters were introduced to Dunedin in early January and have been keeping emergency services busy since.
Dunedin Hospital emergency department clinical leader Dr John Chambers said last week that staff had dealt with several ‘‘e-scooter patients with painful and serious injuries’’.
Anecdotally, staff initially dealt with five to seven such cases each day, ‘‘directly attributable to Lime scooters’’, he said.
That number had since reduced to one or two a day.
Chambers urged students returning to Dunedin for the new academic year to ‘‘be sensible, stay safe and wear a helmet’’.
‘‘I don’t really care about scars, I just want my hair to grow back.’’ Renee Whitehouse