'I was impaled on a pole' ALYSSA BETTS May 4th, 2009 SPEARED: Cearne Murch, 22, shows her scars after she survived a devastating car crash, in which a pine log pole impaled her through her thigh and came out her back. Picture: PATRINA MALONE CEARNE Murch was hurt so badly - impaled on a pine log - that doctors did not think she would survive. Instead the 22-year-old mum defied expectations. But she now joins that largely invisible group of car crash survivors who spend years clawing their way back to health and rebuilding their lives. Ms Murch has just got back to Darwin after nearly dying when a pole rammed its way through her - punching into her left thigh, smashing her pelvis, and coming out her lower back near her spine. It has been a little over 11 weeks since the February headline screamed "Passenger 'impaled' in horror car smash", and the news stories that told the bare facts of a car that went out of control. Now - five blood transfusions, four skin grafts and seven operations later - the mum-of-two is out of an Adelaide hospital and reunited with her daughters, Jayda, 3, and Maia, 2. "I was in an induced coma for a week," Ms Murch said. "And I was in ICU for 10 days down in Adelaide. Then I was in the plastics ward. It was so bad, excruciating. "When they had to do my dressings, four people had to move me because of my pelvis. "They've told me my scars will take 18 months to heal. "It just took so much out of my life, that split second." Ms Murch remembers the black night in February too well. "I was sober. I was awake the whole time when all of it happened. I didn't fall unconscious or anything." She had spent the night having a laugh at Darwin club Hot Potato with her best friend, when they scored a ride home with a mate. It was about 4.30am and there had been light rain as the Subaru Impreza sedan travelled up East Point Rd, Fannie Bay. Then the driver lost control. "We knocked out eight poles and smashed into a tree as well," Ms Murch said. One of those logs pierced the side of the car and skewered her. "I didn't feel the pole going through me," she said. "I had my eyes shut and I could hear 'bang, bang, bang'. "I went to move and I looked down and I could see the pole going through my leg and out my back. "It was coming out about a foot from my back. It had pushed down my seat. "It was a whole one - it wasn't splintered or anything." The logs, which run along parts of the East Point Rd walking track, are about15cm thick. Ms Murch said she could see fat "oozing" out of her leg around the pole. "I put my hand down (on my back) and I could feel my insides," she said. "It was all wet from my blood." Emergency services raced to the crash site. Ms Murch, still conscious and holding hands with her friend - who was in the back seat witha badly broken arm - saidher rescuers could not hide their shock. "They were freaking out because I could move my toes. You could see their faces." "They were like, 'How could you still be awake'?" The young mum, though, was hell-bent on staying conscious. "I kept thinking, 'What if this is it? I'm not going to be able to see my daughters again'. That's what came into my mind - I just had to keep breathing. "It took them about two hours to get me out ... they weren't sure if they could take the pole out of me (there)." In the end she was taken to Royal Darwin Hospital with the pole still through her. There, doctors removed it. She was stabilised in the intensive care unit, put in an induced coma and flown down to Adelaide. To doctors, her recovery was a marvel. She said she was told she would be in hospital for about five months and would need a month to learn to walk again. But she was out in eight weeks and it took her only four days to start walking by herself. "I got really depressed lying down, I saw everyone walking around," she said. She took her first baby steps gripping a walking frame - and it hurt like hell "because all the blood rushed down into my legs for the first time in seven weeks," she said. "There was that pressure, and the skin grafts pulled." Now, back in Darwin, staying with family, she bears horrific scars - both from the crash and the skin grafts - and is trying to train herself out of a limp. The couch has been covered with big fluffy blankets so she can sit down - carefully. But Ms Murch is not out of the woods yet. She may need a back reconstruction and doctors have told her the damage to her pelvis means no more children. She knows she's lucky to be alive, but Ms Murch can't help but count the costs of the crash. "I was working as a full-time receptionist at the Casuarina Community Care Centre," she said. "Now I have to move out of my place and back to my mum's. "It's like I'd made all this progress and now I'm back at square one." She has not spoken to the driver - who escaped serious injury - since that night. Despite the trauma of the last few months, Ms Murch is upbeat about her future. She is very thankful to the emergency services at the scene, the medical staff who cared for her, and her family - especially her own mum. "It's taken a lot out of my life, but ... I see life very differently (now)," she said. "I got a second chance. My daughters are the most important things. "You never think a pole's going to come through the fricking door."
i know its hassle but you need to pull the sentences together and make paragraphs to make it easier to read, im losing where i am all the time :( i had my finger impaled on a splinter once
ouch.. but when i read the title i thought it was some girl poledancing and the pole impaled her LOL but ouch! so long as it aint gory adn graphic like Bizzare ER
lol i can't watch it :( everytime i catch it on is when i thought family guy was on and its the ending of it :S-sweat
yo I was thinking the same thing when i read the title o___o seriously this is too gory for me to read... my imagination is going into scary mode. i feel sorry for the chick. and the car. why subaru impreza (my dream car... realistically ><) can she walk? lucky her... she can stay upright, and her spine wasn't disablingly affected, by the looks of it..
Thats one strong and lucky young women. Makes me think about something I heard a while back "The body is as fragile as the mind is"
so its normal to think about pole dancing hehe:angel: see i am innocent yeah she is lucky.. but i bet she'll end up turning into a faithful Christain after this incident with all the miracle shizzles
i just noticed something.. if a pole impaled her leg to her back wouldn't that have somehow damaged some of her vital organs? :/
