Multisports: She's back in the race ... and grateful

Anna Hamilton is training hard after qualifying for the triathlon world championships. Photo / Glenn Jeffrey

Anna Hamilton does not remember intensive care.

Doctors pored over her, and her parents endured anxious nights sleeping in the hospital corridor.

But for Hamilton, her four days in Auckland City Hospital's intensive care unit, comatose and crippled by severe neck, spine, knee and shoulder injuries, are dark gaps in her memory.

"I do remember a few small things," she says. "Like Dad wiping my face and Mum rubbing my feet. I also remember feeling I was in really good hands with the nurses who kept watch over me."

Her treatment in those four days, especially in the first 24 hours, have given the Auckland triathlete a second chance at living, and competing.

Twenty-one months after she was struck from behind by a car while on a training ride in Dairy Flat, north of Albany, she has qualified for the triathlon world champs in September.

"I left home for my ride at 4pm on a sunny afternoon and was in the ICU by 5.30pm," she recalls.

Hamilton says she owes her life to the doctors who treated her, and is asking New Zealanders to support the intensive care unit this weekend in the Intensive Care Appeal.

"There was a critical period of about 24 hours when they didn't know what was going to happen ... The fact that I can even move my arms now is due to the shoulder reconstruction.

"Now I just say thank-you to the people who have given me such good care. From the surgeons to the cleaners.

Hamilton was in an induced coma for 10 days and in hospital for a month, and wore a neck brace for three months.

The day the brace was removed, she got back on her bike and began the journey to recovery.

"If any one aspect of the way I was treated in hospital had been slightly different, I might not be the same person I am now," she says.

"From someone who has been there in ICU - they do a damn good job."

For more information, go to www.intensivecareappeal.com, or phone 0900-707-707 to donate $20.