‘You can’t live life with regrets’
Summer accident left young daredevil paralysed at age 10
Jamie Astwood was always something of a daredevil child. Ten years ago this week she was dune surfing on the last day of her family’s summer holiday in Northland.
Then just 10 years old, Jamie had surfed several dunes but none as big as the ones at Ahipara, near Kaitaia in the Far North.
“I thought to myself ‘this is a huge one and I’m going to climb right up to the top and it’s going to be good fun’,” she says.
On the way down, Jamie hit a grass patch at the bottom of the dune. She was catapulted through the air.
As she landed she “scorpioned” and broke her back.
Jamie says she remembers how hot it was as she lay there. She remembers people peering over her. And she remembers not being able to feel her legs.
Jamie is just one of the almost 14,000 people who have been injured on the sand in the past decade during the period between December 20 and January 31, according to ACC data.
But her cautionary tale involves one of the most serious injuries.
Jamie — who turns 21 this month — is paralysed from the chest down, classifying her as a T4 paraplegic.
Mum Jo remembers being in such a state of shock that she actually felt calm when the accident happened on January 19, 2013.
She sat by Jamie’s side reassuring her that she wasn’t going to die while an aunty, who is a nurse, spoke to St John on the phone.
“I did walk down onto the sand . . . and I said to God, ‘you need to take care of this because we cannot’. I couldn’t fathom what to do,” says Jo.
Jamie was airlifted to Whangārei Hospital where she underwent multiple tests and x-rays. The same day she was then airlifted to Starship hospital and ended up spending three weeks there.
For the first week, Jamie lay in a hospital bed with a broken back as doctors waited to see if swelling was causing her paralysis before performing spinal cord surgery.
Jamie then spent two months at the Wilson Centre in Auckland for rehabilitation.
She says it was a tough time for her and her family but believes she adapted due to her young age.
“I hadn’t gone through my teenage years and, you know, my 20s being able-bodied and then broken my back. It had happened quite early in life.”
Ten years on and Jamie says she’s lived the life normal of a teenager — she went to school, to parties, has a boyfriend, drives and works.
She and mum Jo say a key is not thinking of her injuries as a disability.
“I can do basically everything anyone else my age can do, it just may take a bit longer or it may just take a little bit of extra thought,” says Jamie, who now works for the police and is also an ambassador for the CatWalk Trust, which supports people with spinal cord injuries.
“Jamie is a remarkable young lady,” says trust manager Meg Speirs.
“Her positivity is infectious — something we can all learn from. When you speak with her, you see
the person, not the chair.”
Jamie says the key to her positivity is being grateful for what she does have, like the use of her arms.
“It was just such a fine line between having limited arm use and then having full arm use.
“I was so lucky to keep that.” Jamie says the injury has shaped her into a positive, optimistic and inspiring woman.
Approaching her 21st birthday, she is most grateful for her support system of family and friends — and becoming fully independent.
“If it didn’t happen, I wouldn’t be, I don’t think I’d be the person [I am]. “I’ve learnt a lot from the accident. “And you can’t live your life with regrets or else you’ll dwell on the past.”