A six-year-old girl cheated death by millimetres after she fell off her bike – and the handle bar impaled her NECK.
Brooke Hulbert took a tumble while playing with friends and the brake lever penetrated her neck, narrowly missing her main artery.
She was quickly airlifted to hospital where doctors said the injury could have proved fatal if it had severed the blood vessel.
Despite her brush with death, the youngster is already eager to get back in the saddle and begin riding again.
Brooke, of Trowbridge, Wilts., said: “I want to go on my bike again, because I love riding it. I go on it every day and I don’t like staying inside.”
Two air ambulances, two rapid response cars and a road ambulance attended the scene and Brooke was flown to Bristol Children’s Hospital.
When paramedics examined the injury they could see her main artery pumping and her jawbone was visible.
Brooke added: “It hurt a bit, but I felt okay and the ambulance people made me laugh, so I wasn’t scared.”
Mum, Kerry O’Shea, 27, said: “She wasn’t crying and there was no blood, so I don’t think she realised how bad it was.
“It is good she wants to go on her bike again, because I don’t want her to be scared, but she needs to rest first, which is hard because she is so active.”
Doctors stitched the hole from the inside, using dissolvable stitches, and used butterfly stitches to close the outside of the wound.
It is unclear if Brooke will have a lasting scar.
It would perhaps be useful if crashes of cycles, and cars were reviewed with the same qualifications and diligence that even minor incidents with planes and trains were, we might get some answers.
Many modern childrens bikes use adult sized parts like brake levers making them clumsy and likely to stick out further than necesssary. many childrens bikes have low budget parts, which may also present the hazard of certain types of injury. It would be useful to know just how a brake lever can end up being forced through the underside of the jaw/throat area, and not apparently for the first time in such a crash. Then we might act on the design detail for childrens bikes
SDAS