Recovery built on small miracles
Simon Rieter’s body was broken after a horrific crash that killed a colleague. But less than a year later, he has won a bodybuilding contest. Tim O’Connell reports.
Simon Rieter’s last memory before the crash is having dinner with his workmates at Murchison. His next memories are faint recollections of neon lights and hushed conversations from people standing around his hospital bed.
What happened in between those flashpoints would take Rieter to within inches of dying and, ultimately, on the road to a remarkable recovery, guided by a series of small victories and a refusal to accept a slow path to healing.
On November 3, 2017, the 35-year-old was with his workmates from ANZ in Nelson and Marlborough on the way to Hanmer Springs for a social weekend.
At that point, Rieter was preparing his beloved sprint car for the upcoming speedway season, while also training for the mountain-run stage of the Coast To Coast adventure race.
‘‘We’d headed off on the Friday afternoon and we were pretty jovial mood, all dressed up in our costumes – it was shaping up to be fun trip.’’
After a dinner break in Murchison, he was driving the group’s minivan on a straight stretch of State Highway 7, near Maruia, when a truck and trailer unit tried to overtake a campervan without enough room to do so safely.
Davila Renee Koroi, 32, of Motueka, was killed in the collision that dragged the crumpled van 30 metres backwards along the highway.
Miraculously, Rieter and four other ANZ staff members survived.
‘‘They [firefighters] thought I was a goner because I was coughing up blood so they thought straight away that I’d punctured my internals.
‘‘They were telling me I was down my last few mls [of blood] – I’d bled right out and it was just the shape I was in that saved me – I had five major surgeries that they basically jammed in pretty fast because my heart was taking it so well.’’
After being flown to Christchurch Hospital, Rieter was in a coma for the first two days and intensive care for a further five.
The rundown of his injuries makes for excruciating reading. His femur was smashed out the back of his pelvis.
He suffered a burst lung and bowel, five burst sections of intestines, damaged kidneys, fluid around his heart, a burst ear drum, critical facial, skull and throat lacerations, left ear torn off, his skull scalped and numerous other fractures.
Rieter required 80 staples in the back of his head, six plates inserted in his face, plates in his right elbow, hip and pelvis.
His teeth remained intact, although two people were required to hold his palate together during surgery.
It was another two weeks before he was reunited with his family, including children Astin, 8, Poppy, 4, and Jayden, 14.
‘‘I didn’t want them to see me in the state I was in, with all the hoses going in and out of me – they see you as being Superman, you know, strong and invincible, . . . so not being able to sit up and give them a hug was pretty tough.’’
Truck driver Leslie Thomas Poa was convicted and sentenced to 20 months in prison for causing the fatal accident. He had been driving without the required amount of rest breaks.
Therapy with a crash psychologist helped Rieter come to grips with the events of that evening and its aftermath.
But it’s his own fierce determination to push his mental and physical abilities that has fuelled his rapid recovery.
Therapists told him he would be on the sofa for the first year and to expect a full recovery of about two years. Rieter was having none of that, starting with getting off the painkillers.
‘‘You have to grin and bear it for those first few days but I knew when it came to my recovery, it would be all about the top two inches.’’
He was able to walk largely unassisted by late February 2018. His attempts to further fast-track his progress did not always go down well with his carers, who said he was doing too much.
‘‘There were a few frowns but that was the point they let me do what I wanted to do, with some boundaries.’’
By March, Rieter was back working part-time at ANZ.
He said it was the continual reaching of small milestones that motivated him to get better.
‘‘When you go through what I’ve been through and then you go for your first pee – heaven – and then being able to go for a walk to go for a pee, that’s next level.
‘‘When you can appreciate just how good something like that is, the rest of the day becomes bloody easy – hopefully, that’s something I’ll keep for the rest of my life, just to enjoy those little miracles, because it makes such a difference.’’
When Rieter hit a plateau with his therapy and gym training, he revisited a goal made during those first lonely nights in Christchurch Hospital.
In June, Rieter enlisted City Fitness Nelson personal trainer Lachlan McLellan to help fulfil his aim of entering a body-building competition.
The usual preparation period for such competitions is up to 25 weeks. McLellan was able to get Rieter in peak shape in just 16.
‘‘The turnaround was so short but you can’t hold back a guy who’s showing that kind of determination,’’ McLellan said.
This month, Rieter took to the stage for the Wellington NABBA-WFF bodybuilding competition.
In a bittersweet moment of triumph, he won the performance category in his first-ever event.
Despite the sadness and frustration of the last 10 months, including not being able to compete in speedway races or long-distance running, Rieter said the competition win was another of the small miracles that proved to himself what he could achieve with the right attitude.
‘‘A lot of things have been taken away and there’s a lot of ‘can’ts’ but this is something I can do.
‘‘Time waits for no-one, so don’t wait around because the next corner you come around, it could be all over.’’