Injured crash cop: The surgeons are legends

Deirdre Lack says she no longer worries about life's small things. Photo / APN

Deirdre Lack feels like she's floating. Looking down at her pummelled car, she can smell rubber. She can see doors and an engine wrapped around her.

But Senior Sergeant Lack is not floating - she's fighting for her life. The officer in charge of Te Puke police has just had a head-on collision with Te Puke teenager Daniel Longney.

An airbag has whacked her in the face. Her body is wedged against the steering wheel of her Nissan station wagon. Her thigh bone is broken, as are both her arms and her ankle. Her pelvis is fractured.

Police, paramedics and firefighters work frantically to free her. Close to death, she is taken to Tauranga Hospital, operated on for eight hours and placed in an induced coma. Daniel Longney was also badly injured.

Ms Lack, 40, a police officer for 14 years, is telling her story knowing she will spend at least another month in hospital.

December 22 was the day Senior Sergeant Lack's life changed forever. One kilometre from Manoeka Rd, at 4.45am, Ms Lack and Daniel Longney collide. Their cars end up 75m from each other. "It wasn't until week four that I realised what had happened," Ms Lack says.

"I've been to a lot of fatals on that stretch of road. I used to be the highway patrol sergeant so I used to patrol that road a lot."

She has a rod where she broke her femur in two places. She has a large plate and screws in her ankle and a plate in her arm.

Her pain medication has been reduced and she's relieved to be off morphine. "I was hallucinating a lot. It was quite bad. Some of the nurses thought I had a head injury with some of the things I would say."

It's only in the past fortnight that Ms Lack has been able to feed herself and she can now shower herself while lying on a special bed. Her recovery has been helped by her fitness and she was able to be hoisted out of bed and put in a wheelchair after four weeks because her pelvis had healed so quickly.

"The surgeons are legends," she says. "It's amazing what they've done."

Her hands run over her legs as she points out her scars and places where rods and plates have been inserted.

She looks remarkable for what she's been through and appears to be incredibly lucky.

She says: "No. Mum and I don't like using that word. It's just fate. I'm different now. My parents are too."

How?

"I don't think you worry about money and stuff any more.

"Just every day is great and I think when I get back training and I've got a sore calf I don't think that'll worry me considering that my whole body aches."

One of the first to arrive at the scene of the crash was her boss, Inspector Mike Clement, the Western Bay of Plenty area commander.

"Mike Clement was in the car with me when they were trying to get me out. Then he was in the ambulance with me. For the first three weeks, he was here every day. That's the police family again, that's what it's like. He pops in every three to two days.

"The whole eight-hour operation, he was there all the time. It's amazing, eh?"

Will she return to the police?

"Oh yeah. I haven't left them," she says staunchly. "We're a huge, happy family [at the Te Puke station] and apparently it was pretty vacant there for a few weeks. They were just drifting really ... we're all pretty close so it was hard for them ..."

Her mother, Robyn, will move in temporarily when she leaves hospital.

"My parents are wonderful ... the hardest part for me was knowing what they went through when they found out I had the crash."

- APN