Cambridge-News.co.UK: Accident victim urges cyclists to wear helmets
WHEN Claire McMahon-Lee came round in hospital there was one question she kept being asked: ‘Were you wearing a helmet?’
The confident cyclist had been involved in a collision with a car which left her critically ill in Addenbrooke’s.
The accident in Chesterton Road, Cambridge, on January 26 left her with a fractured skull and she spent a week receiving treatment in the Neuro Critical Care Unit.
The 29-year-old was told that a helmet would have spared her the “horrendous” pain and anguish she has gone through in the last few weeks as she has embarked on the road to recovery.
And now she is warning other cyclists that a helmet could save their life.
She said: “I came round in the NCCU where I was hooked up to a ventilator, had tubes everywhere, a fractured skull and the biggest headache known to mankind.
“The biggest question all the doctors had to ask me was: ‘Were you wearing a helmet?’ My regretful, mumbled answer to this question was: ‘No’.
“If I had been wearing a cycle helmet then I may not have been lying there with a head injury, a feeding tube in my nose and an intravenous line in every place possible.
“My family may not have had to go through the terror of being told that things were touch and go and that the 24 hours after I was brought in were critical.”
Claire, a marketing assistant, said: “I have learnt, in a horrendously painful way, such a simple fact: wearing a helmet can potentially save your life.”
