When Kelly-Ann’s face was flattened in a horrific horse-riding accident, doctors warned she might die, or suffer severe brain damage. Now she’s a smart, pretty teenager who’s still happiest in the saddle
Looking down at her little girl lying in a crumpled heap on the grass, Carol Challinor was numb with horror. Thrown from a horse, which reared and hit her square in the head, 9-year-old Kelly-Ann’s face was a bloody, unrecognisable mess.
“I honestly didn’t believe it was my daughter lying there,” remembers Carol. “It was the most horrific thing. Her face was completely crushed.
“Her eyes… One of her eyes looked like it was coming right out. There was blood coming out of her nose and her ear. And she was thrashing around.
“It was just the most awful thing I’ve ever seen. I honestly looked at her and thought ‘There must be some mistake: this isn’t Kelly-Ann’ – but it was.”
Kelly-Ann had sustained major head injuries. Her entire face had been flattened: her jaw, cheekbones, eye orbits, nose and skull were all fractured in multiple places. Rushed to Addenbrooke’s, doctors warned Kelly-Ann might die; if she survived, they cautioned she could have severe brain damage.
To see Kelly-Ann now, a bright, outgoing and seriously sporty 15-year-old, it’s clear her recovery has been little short of miraculous. Her face – which had to be almost completely rebuilt by surgeons – looks totally normal; the only sign of her traumatic accident is a long scar, hidden in her hairline.
Excelling at school, she is predicted straight As and A*s in her upcoming GCSEs. She has a busy social life and appears to live for sport, listing rowing, rounders, athletics, netball and rugby among her favoured pastimes.
Most amazingly of all, Kelly-Ann is a keen and accomplished horsewoman who harbours ambitions of becoming a top-flight eventer; last summer saw her compete in the British Riding Club Junior National Eventing Championships.
So didn’t her accident put her off? “Oh no,” smiles Kelly-Ann, who lives in Exning. “I just saw it as a bit of a blip, which meant I couldn’t ride for a while. For me it’s always been horses, ever since I started riding at about five or six.”
Carol and husband Noel moved to Britain, from their native South Africa, when Kelly-Ann and younger brother Robert were still tots. “It’s really horses that brought us here,” explains Carol – Noel works at Exning’s Northmoor Stud, and the couple also keep a small yard of their own. “But this is home now, most definitely our home.”
At the time of her accident, Kelly-Ann had her own pony, Chrissy. But that day she was riding another, decidedly more temperamental horse. “I asked her to do something a second time and she decided she didn’t want to do it,” recounts the teenager. “She reared up, knocked me out and fell over backwards; instead of landing right on top of me, she hit me with the side of her head. I actually don’t remember anything about it, not a thing.”
Carol, in a nearby barn, heard screaming: “I heard someone saying ‘Kelly, breathe!’ and I knew something was majorly wrong. I ran over to where she was… I thought ‘This is it. Our lives are never going to be the same again’.”
Within minutes First Responders and then Magpas were on the scene. “I was dead calm. Dead, dead calm,” continues Carol. “Once they all arrived I just stepped back, to let them get on with their jobs. It wasn’t until we got to the hospital that it really hit me – and then my wheels just fell off… I was convinced that, if she survived, she would be severely brain damaged.”
Blue-lighted to Addenbrooke’s, Noel says a team of 15 medics was waiting ‘like a scene from ER’. Putting Kelly-Ann in a drug-induced coma, they proceeded to take numerous x-rays in attempt to assess the damage.
The Challinors still have copies of those images – and they make frightening viewing. A side view shows that Kelly-Ann’s whole face had been pushed back into her head; among the most serious injuries was a huge rip across her forehead, and a split at the base of her skull.
“Those fractures occurred either side of her riding hat,” says Noel. “If she hadn’t been wearing that, everything in between would have been crushed too. Without a doubt, that hat saved her life.”
Kelly-Ann remained in the coma, on drips and ventilation in paediatric intensive care (known as PICU), for five days. Coming round was, she says, something of a blur: “To start with, I thought I was having a dream. I dreamt I was flying, then I heard all these voices around me… And I can remember a lady coming and helping me do some drawings: typically, I wanted to draw my pony.”
As the swelling in her head subsided, doctors were pleased with Kelly-Ann’s brain function. But it was clear she would need complex surgery to reconstruct her face; the surgeons, remembers Carol, were frank about the risks involved.
A team of experts – including maxillofacial, neuro and ophthalmic surgeons – all played a part. Reassembling Kelly-Ann’s bone structure was extra-challenging because of her age: aware she had a lot more growing to do, surgeons were reluctant to insert too much metalwork; in the end, only two metal plates were used (in her forehead and one cheekbone) along with some wiring.
By making incisions high on her forehead and inside her mouth, scarring was kept to a minimum. But doctors did have to remove all Kelly-Ann’s hair, which she remembers as ‘one of the worst moments’. “I woke up and all my hair was gone. It sounds silly, but that seemed really awful. That was one of the worst moments, second only to removing the plaster from my head: the nurses let me do it myself, it was so painful, and it took me forever.”
“That was the first time in all of this that this child cried,” says Carol.
“And she was very upset about her hair: she had long, blonde locks at the time and she loved them. Robert was so supportive: he said straight away
‘I’m going to shave my head too’. I took my hair off as well, so the three of us were skinheads together.”
Among Carol’s most abiding memories is the moment Kelly-Ann first saw herself in the mirror. “It was about two days before she was discharged and her grandmother and I took her for a bath. She looked at herself in the mirror and didn’t say a word; the tears just rolled silently down her cheeks.”
“We’d been warned that, because of the location of her forehead injury, two things might happen: she might lose her sense of smell, and her personality could be affected,” continues Carol. “Well, as you can see, she has plenty of personality. And, a few days after the op, Noel took in some flowers; as he walked through the door, Kelly-Ann said ‘Oh, those flowers smell lovely’. At the time, her eyes were still so swollen she couldn’t even see the flowers were there. That seemed amazing.”
A week after the surgery, Kelly-Ann was allowed home. But it was months before life began to get back to normal. So weak she had to use a wheelchair to begin with, the schoolgirl couldn’t bathe or dress or even walk unaided. “I had to literally crawl up the stairs,” she remembers. “As well as having a headache I was really dizzy, so I couldn’t even walk in a straight line. Going from being a really sporty person to that was a bit of a shock.”
Kelly-Ann’s main focus was getting back in the saddle. The accident happened on April 21 and by the following August, less than four months later, she was aboard a pony and taking part in a riding school fun day. Soon after that, Kelly-Ann was once again riding at every opportunity.
Aside from some eye problems – for a time she suffered with double vision – and a second op on her sinuses, Kelly-Ann’s health has gone from strength to strength and, last year, she was finally discharged from Addenbrooke’s. The Challinors say they cannot praise both hospital and Magpas staff enough and make no bones about the fact they saved their daughter’s life.
“We are incredibly blessed,” adds Carol. “I’m not an overly religious person, but the power of prayer is unbelievable. That’s one thing I did a lot of that first night – praying. And I know a lot of family and friends were praying for Kelly-Ann too; we had so much support.”
Now looking to the future, Kelly-Ann has the ‘joy’ of exams ahead and intends ‘to see just how far we can take the riding’.
“She does really well at school. We went to a parents’ evening the other day and it was just ridiculous,” laughs Noel. “Every single teacher said ‘Her marks are pretty well straight As, what else can I tell you?’.
“She’s got a great circle of friends and she works hard – everything she does, she gives it 100 per cent. She’s amazed us all. To be honest, we couldn’t be more proud.”
source: cambridge-news.co.uk
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