SHOWJUMPER DESCRIBES HORROR KICK THAT SHATTERED HER FACE
EXCLUSIVE BY MUMSHAYNET
A split second was all it took to change Jamie Ellis’s life forever when her horse kicked her flush in the face in a freak accident that left her unrecognisable.
Speaking for the first time about her ordeal, Jamie told MumsHaynet: “I heard it all. I heard the facial cracks. I lost four teeth. My nose was shattered. And I couldn’t speak for all the blood I was swallowing.
“The people who ran to help me were only able to work out who I was because my name was on the stable door.”
Unbelievably, three months after the accident that also cost Jamie her right eye, she was back riding.
“You get confidence by doing,” she said. “Once I was on the horse, I could feel that my injuries hadn’t affected my riding at all, and once I got over that I was like, so, what do we work towards now?”
The answer was, getting back to doing what she loves best – show jumping.
Inspired by the achievements of fellow Australian and three-time Olympian, Vicki Roycroft, whose eye was removed after a melanoma diagnosis in 2007, Jamie said: “I remember thinking in hospital that if Vicki Roycroft can jump World Cups with one eye, I can at least get back on my horse.”
Of course, Jamie didn’t only get back on her horse, she started competing again, and eight months after the accident – following three major surgeries – she has now attended five shows.
“It has been awesome,” Jamie admitted.
Speaking to Jamie today, it is hard to believe that only eight months have passed since she was fighting a life-or-death battle at Melbourne’s Alfred Hospital where she had been placed in a medically-induced coma due to the severity of her injuries.
Just as remarkable is the matter-of-fact way she rattles off the catalogue of injuries she suffered and her pragmatic evaluation of what happened that morning at a yard, an hour from home, where she had competed the previous day.
Recalling that moment last October, Jamie revealed it had been the first outing with her new horse, a five-year-old bay mare called Tully.
Having enjoyed a successful riding career with her ‘heart horse’ Murphy, reaching Young Rider Level, where the jumps start at 1.35m, Jamie was looking forward to the challenge of bringing on a younger horse.
But that morning, as she went to muck out, the mare jumped over the wheelbarrow that was blocking the open stable door and headed for the exit – close to a main road.
Fearing what might happen if her horse reached the road, Jamie acted quickly, but calmly.
“I went into problem solver mode,” she said.
Injuries
With no halter on, and wearing only a thin cotton stable rug, Tully marched for the exit with Jamie slowly but surely catching her up, all the while speaking gently in order to calm the rattled horse.
Once she was at Tully’s shoulder, Jamie reached for the neck of the rug, but the mare responded by leaping forward. As she jumped, she kicked out, hitting Jamie full in the face.
“I remember everything,” Jamie said. “A lot of it was audio. I heard all the facial cracks. Four teeth got knocked out. I heard it all.
“From the impact, I fell on the concrete floor, and my nose shattered. The skin on my lip and nose split open, and I could feel the swelling was immediate.”
By pure chance, a trauma nurse was in a vehicle passing the stable block when the accident happened and quickly ran to help. She was joined by another woman who had met Jamie once before, but didn’t immediately recognise her due to the extent of her facial injuries.
“The person I knew held my hand throughout and kept talking to me all the time,” Jamie recalled.
“I couldn’t speak because the roof of my mouth had cracked and it was bleeding. I was swallowing a lot of blood, but I remember trying to ask after my horse. Eventually, they figured out I was asking after Tully and they said she was OK.”
Rapidly responding to the emergency call, an ambulance arrived and it’s the last memory Jamie has of that day, no doubt due to the medication the first responders gave.
Ill-equipped to deal with the scale of her injuries, Jamie was then airlifted to the Alfred Hospital in Melbourne, where she was placed in an induced coma.
“I woke up five days later,” she said.
Nervous
Throughout the ordeal, Jamie’s parents Karen and Daniel, and her brother William, barely left her side.
Because her family was unsure as to how she might react to news of the extent of her injuries, when Jamie finally regained consciousness she assumed from the way they were talking to her that her horse “hadn’t made it.”
“When I woke up, I was in a lot of pain,” she said. “My parents told me I was in the ICU in the Alfred and how long I had been out. They said I had extensive injuries, but they didn’t go into the details. From how they were behaving, I could tell they were nervous.”
While Jamie quickly understood she no longer had front teeth, medics eventually explained that she would need extensive surgery to rebuild her face.
A 10cm bone graft from her right hip was required to rebuild her nose, cheeks and upper jaw. Four plates were then inserted on the left side of her face and three on the right to hold the fractures in place so they might heal. Meanwhile, at her temples, screws were used to repair fractures to the side of her eye sockets.
Despite efforts to save the sight in Jamie’s right eye, which had suffered a globe rupture, the decision was taken to remove it and replace it with an implant.
In total, Jamie needed five surgeries to rebuild her face and it’s likely she will need two more to complete the partial reconstruction of her nose and give her dental implants.
Despite the huge physical toll that the accident has exacted on Jamie’s body, she says the hardest battle so far has been psychological.
“I always compare back to what I used to look like,” she explains, honestly. “I know it looks good, in terms of what the surgeons did, but it has been extremely hard accepting the differences I see. That’s probably been the hardest thing.”
In order to deal with the mental impact of her injuries, Jamie has regular therapy sessions with a sports psychologist, who also pushed her to get back on her horse, sooner rather than later.
“In hospital, I knew I wanted to get back in the saddle, but it’s a lot easier to be positive in hospital where you are surrounded by care and experts and drugs and family and people coming to see you all the time.
“But then, as soon as you go home, and you’re in that space where you used to be normal, and you have that contrast of how you are now compared to where you were then, that’s when the negative thoughts fly in.”
Although Jamie went to see Tully while she recovered from her surgeries, there was no thought of riding for at least three months because she wasn’t even permitted to drive while she healed.
But then in January, as soon as she was able to drive herself to the yard, she knew it was time.
“My psychologist is a sports psychologist who jumped to World Cup level herself and she rang the yard that day to speak to me. I wasn’t sure I could get on, but she said ‘don’t be ridiculous, get back on the horse,’ and so I did.
“In the end, it wasn’t that difficult because it wasn’t a riding accident that put me in hospital. It wasn’t Tully being naughty. It wasn’t her fault. I made a decision and having horses comes with risks that we take every day.”
A few weeks after Jamie got back in the saddle, she decided to pop a small fence in the arena. A few weeks after that, she was back competing.
“When riding, you have to be present. Your mind doesn’t wander while you ride. You don’t feel from inside out,” explained Jamie.
“Right now, I can feel there is still swelling in my face, there is that tightness, but when you are riding, you don’t feel any of that. You don’t feel the pain and it doesn’t matter how my face is because my body can function.”
Although Jamie remains cautious about pinning too many hopes and dreams on Tully, she admits to being excited about the possibilities ahead.
“Tully is large at 17 hands, but still weak from the time off. Still, she has been amazing. She’s bold as brass and couldn’t care less about what’s in the arena.
“The shows have been good so far and she has been slowly progressing through the heights. We’ve now done a 1.05m class.
“I’d love to see how far Tully can go. She’s really good. She gives a really nice feel over the fence, and when she gets there, and gets there good, she feels really powerful. It’s just that she is functionally weak still.”
As well as the towering support of her family during her recovery, Jamie said she had been overwhelmed by the incredible care of the equestrian and showjumping community.
“The outpouring of love from them was overwhelmingly beautiful. They visited me in hospital and constantly reached out to offer assistance to my family. It’s such an amazing group of people.”
As well as riding, Jamie has resumed the academic career that was put on hold following the accident. After acquiring a Masters of biomedical science in muscle wastage in patients with disease, she is working towards a PhD.
As for the end goal, it’s to own her own property where she can live with her beloved dog, Rosie, and several cats, as well as a team of horses. When it comes to Tully, Jamie is prepared to see where fate next takes them.
“I don’t want to put a goal on her,” she said, “but I’d love to see what she can do.”
