BROKEN BACK
Trampoline horror
A STUDENT nurse has become the second person from North Wales to suffer serious injuries at a trampoline park.
Ceri Jones was left with a broken vertebra when it “exploded” on impact after she leapt off the Tower Jump at Flip Out Chester.
The 21-year-old’s story comes days after it was revealed Wrexham nurse Liza Jones fractured her spine on the same attraction and is taking legal action against the owners.
The park near Ellesmere Port, which opened last December, says it has an “excellent safety record”.
Ceri, who is recovering at her parents’ home in Beddgelert, said she had been at Flip Out with fellow student nurses from Liverpool’s John Moores University. She has been warned her hopes of a career in nursing may be over, depending on her recovery.
She said: “I heard a crunch and I couldn’t move – I was in agony. I was sat in there for 15 minutes before they carried me out. I thought I must have done something to my pelvis because I could feel pain there, too.
“It took two hours for the ambulance to come and the first-aiders were just saying ‘ she will be fine’. But because we are student nurses we knew something was badly wrong. I felt physically sick with the pain.”
Ceri, who is intending to take legal action against the company, said she can’t even stand up to clean her teeth because of the pain and has to be helped in and out of the bath by two people.
She is under the care of a specialist at Walton Hospital in Liverpool and wears a back brace to stop shards of bone from the broken vertebra slipping into her spinal fluid and potentially paralysing her.
She is waiting to discover if she needs surgery,which she fears will scupper her chances of doing her dream job.
“I have a nursing job lined up at Aintree University Hospital in the emergency department. I’m supposed to start in September but I don’t know whether I will be able to do it now,” she said.
A spokesman for Flip Out Chester said: “Since opening around 200,000 people have visited Flip Out Chester and we have an excellent safety record.”