Biker who broke every limb in her body and had car lifted off her head becomes NRC ambassador | Latest news

A woman who was run over by a car towing a caravan when she came off her motorbike in Germany and suffered more than 20 broken bones and injuries has become the latest ambassador for the country’s first NHS National Rehabilitation Centre (NRC).  

Janet Crook-Moore, 58, suffered the near-fatal accident in June last year whilst on a biking holiday through Europe to Sweden with her husband, Roger Moore, and 18 other motorcyclists.  

She was put into an induced coma on the roadside and spent seven weeks in a German hospital before she was flown back to NUH’s Queen’s Medical Centre – the closest Major Trauma Centre to her home in Bourne, Lincolnshire.  

It was here that she worked with the NRC team to learn to walk again and became passionate about wanting to share the importance of rehabilitation and so has become the latest patient ambassador for the NRC.  

The NRC is a 70-bed specialist rehabilitation centre for NHS patients who have experienced a life-changing illness or injury, and it will be run and staffed by Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust (NUH) when it opens this year.  

Janet explained that she has no memory of the accident, but her husband and the other bikers have helped her to piece together what happened.  

She said: “We were heading towards the ferry from Puttgarden to Denmark. It had been raining, and so my back wheel slipped on something and the bike began sliding.  

“My bike bounced off the car and then I went under it. It was a young family on holiday towing a caravan, and thankfully they stopped quickly so the caravan didn’t go over me too. 

“It took several people to lift the car off my head.”   

Miraculously, the biking group had recently overtaken an ambulance on the motorway, which immediately stopped to help her, as did the police commissioner for that area. Two air ambulances with key medical personnel were also already in the vicinity and were able to get to Janet quickly.  

She said: “If it wasn’t for all of those factors, I wouldn’t be here today.  

“They put me into an induced coma on the road so that they could move me, and I was taken in an air ambulance to hospital.  

“I woke up five days later in the Intensive Care Unit with a drain in my lung as I’d punctured one, and was like the bionic man with cages on my legs. I had broken every limb in my body.  

“I must have had some awareness through my subconscious as when I woke up no-one had to tell me I’d been in a massive accident. 

Janet’s injuries were extensive. She had fractured both collarbones, had nine broken ribs, a punctured and collapsed lung, a fractured sternum (chest bone), multiple fractures in her pelvis, shattered her left femur, broken her left fibula (calf bone), her left tibia (shinbone) was in three pieces, had tendon damage to her right knee, chipped a bone in her right wrist and fractured her scaphoid in her left wrist.  

Janet said: “One of the doctors said to my husband that I had given Evel Knievel a run for his money.  

“They started putting me back together in Germany. I was strapped up and told to lie down which was hard because once I’d come to in ITU I was raring to get up and go!” 

Janet had several surgeries over the course of the seven weeks in the German Hospital -  University Hospital Schleswig-Holstein - including pins and plates in her leg before her travel insurance company arranged for her to be medically evacuated back to the UK.  

She was brought to her nearest Major Trauma Centre - QMC - as she needed extensive treatment including plastic surgery on her legs.  

She was on the C30 Major Trauma Ward for several weeks and began her rehabilitation journey with some physiotherapy in bed and learning to use a slide board to get from the bed to the chair.  

However, thanks to Janet’s crash helmet, despite the severity of the accident she had only suffered a split lip and didn’t have a head injury. This became important during her recovery as complex inpatient rehabilitation has previously only been available for patients requiring neurorehabilitation, something the NRC model is beginning to change.  

Janet was therefore transferred to our Edward 2 Ward at NUH’s City Hospital where the NRC model has been piloted, providing intensive rehabilitation to major trauma patients and much earlier in their recovery journey. 

Janet said: “It was a massive difference from Day 1 – the team are set up to get you up and mobile in a much more intensive way.  

“The NRC model is a brilliant idea – you have to capture patients early and get them into the right mindset of moving forward. The patient also has to want to get better, and be willing to set goals in order to get them to where they want to be.  

“We started working on my legs to build up my muscle strength with exercises on the parallel bars, sitting to standing movements, and getting my hips moving again.  

“I was given a frame to walk up and down the gym and ward with, and then the next step was crutches and building up my walking using those, and soon I was ready to walk out of the hospital using crutches and return home. 

“It was daunting because I hadn’t seen my house in four months, so it was weird coming home.” 

Unfortunately, rehabilitation is rarely straightforward and Janet has had a couple of infections since initially going home, which has meant some further time in the hospital and rehabilitation wards.  

In addition, the Orthopaedic team at NUH have been able to help Janet to regrow the 4.5cm of her tibia (shin) bone which had died, with approximately half a mm growing each day. This is a surgical technique that uses the body's natural healing process to grow new bone and surrounding soft tissue, by dividing the bone, installing a wire frame and gradually moving the bone apart, which encourages regeneration of new bone to fill the gap.  

Janet explained that because the new bone is fragile and like candyfloss, she is currently limited to how much weight it can bear on it so still has to use crutches at home and a wheelchair out of the house, but she continues to enjoy days out.  

Mr Andrew Taylor, Consultant Orthopaedic Surgeon and Medical Lead for the NRC, explained that Janet had extensive injuries when she arrived at NUH, but that she has clearly benefitted from intensive rehabilitation.  

He said: “Janet is unusual due to the volume of severe, life-changing injuries that she had sustained.  

“Thanks to the NRC model, we were able to provide her with intensive support from our rehabilitation team, something that just isn’t possible on a trauma admissions ward.  

“Not only were we working to heal the individual injuries, but also more holistically to address her severe deconditioning – which is one of the main aims of the NRC and rarely happens elsewhere in the UK.  

“Together, we were able to get Janet back to independent living and enjoying life, and we continue to support her towards returning to independent work.” 

In the long term, Janet plans to return to her job as a Quality Manager in a laboratory, and is determined to return to her independent life and to come to see the NRC and encourage the patients as soon as possible.