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A woman who attempted suicide after being involved in a head-on collision with a drink driver in Staffordshire has bravely opened up about the toll it has taken on her life.
At 10am on 21 November 2021, part-time model Rachel Downes, from Stoke-on-Trent, was ready for an easy Sunday drive as she set off for a photoshoot.
By 11am, she was in a coma.
Three weeks later, she woke up in hospital with no recollection or knowledge of what had happened to her.
She would later learn that she had been hit, head-on, by a drink-driver on the A51 Rugeley Bypass.
The then-28-year-old had not been expected to survive the crash. She has spent the last two years attempting to rebuild her broken body and life as she continues her battle against the mental and physical aftermaths of the collision.
The day of the crash was one that permanently redefined her life.
She said: "It honestly feels like it was a dream.
"When I woke up from the coma, my body felt heavy and I couldn't move much. It’s not something you can really imagine unless you've experienced it yourself.”
Around her full-time job, Rachel was also a passionate fitness instructor and, alongside her partner, Matt, she used to go outdoor rock climbing and bouldering.
She said: "I wanted to be up on my feet right away. I don’t think I even questioned why I was in hospital to begin with.
"To this day, I have no idea how I managed it, but I pulled myself up, shuffled myself to the very end of the bed and swung my legs through this gap in the safety bars that were on the side.
"I did manage to launch myself off the bed, but rather than landing on my feet, I landed straight on my face.”
It was only until after an MRI scan that she learned the full extent of the damage that had been done to her body.
She said: “I asked the surgeon to give me a list of what I’d broken, to which he responded, ‘It’d be easier for me to tell you what isn’t broken’ and then pointed at my shins and said, ‘Just these’.”
She had suffered a brain injury and broken the top of her spine, part of her shoulder, her humerus on both sides and her elbow. She had also broken eight to 12 ribs, shattered her pelvis and broken her knee and right femur, as well as scarring all over her body.
She said: "I don't remember specifically when I was told for the first time, but I kept having to ask my partner why I was in hospital.
"There were so many occasions where it must've felt to him like we were having the same conversation for the hundredth time, but I just couldn't compute anything.
"My partner wasn't there, so he couldn't give me many details, and neither could my parents, so the only people who truly knew what had gone on were the driver and potentially any witnesses.
"The facts are that I was left pretty much immobile following a crash that I had no memory of and that was caused by someone else's irresponsibility. How do you get your head around that?"
The irresponsibility aspect was particularly hard to take for Rachel. The offending driver was heading to a fast-food restaurant with some friends, having gone out the night before. A breathalyser test after the crash showed that he had 61 micrograms of alcohol per 100 millilitres of breath. The legal limit is 35.
She continued: "When I found out that I was in this situation due to a drink-driver, I just had this surge of heat rush over my body. It was a heat that stayed with me for a very long time, because I was so unbelievably angry.”
Rachel's inability to rationalise exactly why she had been involved in the crash brought about some dark trains of thought.
She said: "For a while, it felt like me against the world. I'm not a spiritual or religious person at all, but it did make me think 'How could God, the universe or whatever there is out there cause this to happen to me?'.
"But there I was, asking myself what I’d done to deserve it. That’s not something that you can come to terms with overnight.
“For a lot of 2022, I went into a really dark place because I was so angry and I was in so much pain.
“It ended up getting to the point where I really wish that I had died because I felt like life would be easier if I had.
“I was pushing my loved ones away, which left them feeling helpless and insignificant. And then that left me feeling so unbelievably confused as to why I was acting like that.
“I understand now that part of that was the impact of the brain injury. It affected my memory and my mood severely.
“And then when I was told that people thought I was going to die and when my partner expressed to me how he felt coming to see me in hospital whilst I was in the coma, it just really got to me. He just said that he was so scared. He came so close to losing me.
“In September 2022, I tried to commit suicide.
“Thankfully – and I mean that with every fibre of my being – I never succeeded. But it’s extraordinary to think that I went from being so close to losing my life in the car crash to then attempting to take it.
“In a way, I feel like I’ve survived twice.
“I suppose that’s the butterfly effect in practice – one person’s decision to drink-drive has had all of these unimaginable consequences.
“It’s affected so many things in my future. I was told that I probably won’t be able to give birth naturally because of the damage caused to my body.
“Not only has that man’s decision to drink-drive changed how I look, with all the scarring…it’s also eroded my autonomy and any plans that I might have had for the future and that hurts more than anything physically.”
Defiantly, Rachel has nothing to say directly to the man who caused the crash. She does, however, want to share a message to all other road users.
She said: “Just be self-aware. Be aware of what you can handle and what you can deal with. And that’s not just from an alcohol or drugs perspective – it could be from an emotional point-of-view too.
“If you’re about to get behind the wheel of a car and there are any factors that could blur or obscure your ability to safely drive, just don’t do it. Ask yourself ‘am I in a responsible state to drive?’.
“We hope that people will abide by the law, but a lot of that only deals with what happens once people have already acted irresponsibly. Speed cameras can’t pick people up before they’ve broken the speed limit. In the same way, a prison sentence can’t undo all of the trauma and years of recovery for the victims – if they survive, that is.
“That’s where the preventative measures have to come in, and I think a massive part of that begins with education. That’s exactly why I’m talking to you now, to tell you, first-hand, about the very real effects that drink-driving can have.
“The fact that I have survived should not, in any way, negate the seriousness of drink-driving. It’s still ruined my life and that of those around me and that will never change."
In July 2023, the offending driver, aged 23 at the time of the collision, was sentenced to 28 months in prison and disqualified from driving for 38 months, having pleaded guilty at Stafford Crown Court to causing serious injury by dangerous driving.
As for Rachel, the emotional and physical battle remain ongoing. It’s a battle she may well be fighting for the rest of her life.