UK’s worst bike crash survivor tells of his injuries
Adam Shailer's life was hanging by a thread but he is still standing
Just 18 months ago, Adam Shailer’s life was hanging by a thread after a massive crash left him trapped underneath a Mercedes CLK.
After being rushed to hospital, his list of injuries was dubbed by doctors as the most severe received by any bike rider who lived to tell the tale.
Surgeons who pieced him back together have revealed the full extent of the damage which left him just minutes from death.
His catalogue of catastrophic injuries included an “open book” pelvic fracture where it had been shattered into 29 pieces, two spinal fractures, 18 broken ribs, a broken hip, knee and sternum and a ruptured femoral artery.
Adam’s liver and a kidney were also lacerated, his bowel was squashed in two places and his urethra was left ‘hanging by a thread’.
Another shoulder and hip were dislocated, he had air in his chest cavity and bruising and bleeding around the lungs.
When paramedics found Adam, 36, at the side of the road, barely clinging to life, he was shouting for his daughter Sabrina, who is now five.
“I remember asking the paramedic, ‘Am I going to die today?’ He told me, ‘You are categorically not going to die’,” says Adam, of Stilton, Cambs.
“At that point I faded very quickly and made it very difficult for him to keep his promise. My heart stopped twice on the way to hospital.”
However, the civil servant survived and only now has to walk with a stick because of pain in his leg.
