Fitness journey an inspiration
Diamonds shimmer on Tayla Holmes’ ring finger as she talks, a symbol of love but also a testament to just how far the 23-yearold has come since a serious car crash turned her life upside down seven years ago.
The then 17-year-old was driving to her Rukuhia home on a wet July afternoon in 2014 when her car’s brakes locked on Airport Rd and she aquaplaned head-on into an oncoming vehicle.
While that vehicle’s driver, Glenn Mackenzie, was left fairly unscathed, Holmes wasn’t so lucky.
‘‘I broke both my legs, both ankles, I broke my right foot, pretty much all my left leg, so my knee, my ankle, my tibia, fibula and femur, fractured my pelvis and punctured my lung from my ribs.’’
It left Holmes in ICU with plates and screws holding her leg together.
‘‘The surgeons were very realistic, they couldn’t guarantee [I would walk again] and I used to beg them not to chop my leg off because that is what I thought was going to happen.’’
Five weeks later, with both legs in casts and needing a wheelchair, Holmes was allowed to go home.
She spent the next four to five months learning to walk again.
‘‘I just did what I was told by my physio, hydrotherapy.
‘‘I remember the first time I walked from the house to the letterbox was a massive achievement, it was so slow, it’s always been painful from seven years ago.’’
As a result of her injuries, Holmes was diagnosed with stage four osteoarthritis, and will most likely need to have her ankles fused eventually.
Despite the pain, Holmes decided last year to make some changes.
Since the accident, she had gradually gained 28 kilograms – lockdown marked the start of Holmes’ transformation journey.
‘‘Obviously, being in a wheelchair, not doing sport, I can’t run or jump, so it was really hard for the first couple of years – I couldn’t do a lot.’’
Holmes worked to improve her diet during lockdown, resulting in weight loss of about
8kg. Once lockdown ended she started training at Te Awamutu’s
Snap Fitness gym.
With even a simple squat beyond her physical ability, Holmes had to go right back to basics and build up from there.
‘‘I couldn’t do much, I couldn’t really walk up stairs, just if I put both feet on one step, because I couldn’t really hold my weight.’’ The work started to pay off. ‘‘By the end of last year I lost 14kg, and I can do so much more now. I have just started playing squash, I can do squats now, I can walk normally up stairs.’’
Another benefit for Holmes is that her pain has eased.
‘‘I still do get sore because with arthritis if you use it too much it gets sore, but I played squash, and I had no pain at all.’’
Holmes’ story has been such an inspiration to others that she has been named one of 10 ambassadors for Snap Fitness in New Zealand and Australia.
She says she is proud to have been chosen, and hopes people will find her story motivational.
‘‘I feel they take the time to teach you properly, so you see the progress with Snap Fitness.’’
Although she is in a much better place now, the bubbly 23-yearold does understand how close she came to dying.
‘‘I feel it is the power of the mind, it sounds really silly, but I feel like if I had wanted to die that night, I could have.
‘‘I was trapped in my car for about 45 minutes and my aunty was sitting with me in the passenger’s seat, my mum and dad came. I am a drama queen, if I fall off my bike I will cry but when I was in my car I was so calm I felt like something else came over me and that continued through my recovery.’’
Holmes says she couldn’t have
done it without her friends and family, her mum Lisa slept in a chair beside her bed for five weeks in hospital.
‘‘My mum stopped working, and she was my carer for months. To shower I had to call up a taxi, take my wheelchair and my shower chair to a rest home in O¯ haupo¯.’’
A positive to come from the accident is the friendship with Mackenzie. ‘‘Glenn and his wife [Helen] came to my 18th and 21st birthdays.
‘‘I didn’t know them before the accident, he found out who I was and came to the hospital with his wife and flowers, and then he takes me and mum out for lunch sometimes.’’
Seven years on, the future is definitely looking better for Holmes.
While the accident meant she never got to finish her final year at Cambridge High, Holmes has almost completed a law degree.
In her final year, she juggles her studies with working parttime for the Public Defence Service.
And as for the diamonds on her finger? That’s the icing on the wedding cake as Holmes’ partner, Brook Bateman, popped the question over Easter Weekend.
The wedding date has been set for April next year.