‘I recognise how fortunate I’ve been’
Ex Silver Fern takes on marathon traverse to aid a cause close to her heart
On the netball court, Adine Wilson owned it. On the attic ladder, not so much.
One moment, the former Silver Ferns captain was climbing down from the attic of the Mangawhai holiday home she owns with husband — former All Black Jeff Wilson. The next, she was on her back with a broken neck, “millimetres” from paralysis.
Today, almost three years after the life-changing accident, the lawyer and mum-of-two will run the 12km traverse event in the Auckland Marathon, doing her bit to help others who suffer spinal injuries and are not so lucky.
And while she might’ve been an ace on the netball court, Wilson told the Weekend Herald she was “not a long-distance runner by any means — I liked playing short, sharp netball and I liked sprints”.
She said training for the traverse had been a good challenge, “but my body has also reminded me that I’ve played a lot of netball and it doesn’t particularly like running on roads any more, so I’m probably at my limit.
“I’m not trying to break any records or finish in the top particular number. My big focus is literally running from start to finish, so I’ll be really proud if I can just constantly run, especially as I hit the Harbour Bridge.”
Her effort was also about helping those who hadn’t been as fortunate after suffering spinal injuries. The 40-year-old is running for the CatWalk Spinal Cord Injury Research Trust, which funds research aiming to fix paralysis after spinal cord injury.
“I recognise how fortunate I’ve been, with my accident, and that others hadn’t been so fortunate. It seemed like a nice way to give back to a cause that has a very direct meaning to me.”
Wilson was injured on New Year’s Eve 2016, and immediately knew the fall was serious. “I couldn’t move my right side. I remember not wanting to scare my husband. He shouted out ‘You okay?’ and I said ‘Uh, no’.”
The pair decided not to wake their sleeping sons, Harper, now 11, and Lincoln, now 9, as an ambulance crew arrived to take Wilson to Whanga¯rei Base Hospital.
There, Wilson discovered she had two neck vertebrae fractures, one an unstable C4 fracture and the other a stable C7 fracture but “by some miracle” her spinal cord remained intact, with only a small bruise showing on the MRI scan. The C4 fracture was considered unstable because a bone was “floating and had pushed into the spinal cord”, Wilson said. “Initially it was quite calm and then it turned quite chaotic. I was strapped down, but [hospital staff ] strapped me down further and literally said ‘do not move’.” Wilson was flown to Middlemore Hospital in Auckland, where a surgeon fused her C3, C4 and C5 vertebrae together in a six-hour surgery on New Year’s Day.
She has “rods, bolts and a cage encompassing my vertebrae” but was able to leave hospital in less than a week, after which she wore a neck brace for six weeks. Almost three years on, the attic ladder has been replaced with stairs and a rail and Wilson suffers almost no illeffects from her injury.
The injury, and the loss of friend and former Silver Ferns teammate Tania Dalton, who died after suffering a brain aneurysm in March 2017, had changed her outlook on life, Wilson said.
“The two are almost combined in my brain — what those two things made me learn is, I know it sounds cliche, but you have to live in the moment, and take the opportunities to challenge yourself and get out there, because you literally don’t know what’s around the corner.”