KEY POINTS:
There has been an accident, please get to the hospital as quickly as you can." It's a parent's worst nightmare.
For Katy and Doug Hamilton the call came about 4pm on Friday August 3. An hour later, fearing the worst and after battling Auckland's traffic, they were at Auckland Hospital.
The distraught parents were told their only daughter, 21-year-old Anna, one of New Zealand's best multisport athletes, had been hit by a car while on a training ride north of the city.
She was unconscious in a drug-induced coma in the critical care unit.
"We were taken to a room, given her clothing and told she needed a CAT scan to reveal the extent of head, neck and knee injuries," said Katy Hamilton.
"They let us know it was serious but nothing can prepare you for the shock of seeing the daughter you love so dearly in such a bad way. They didn't mince words. There were no false hopes."
But anguished parents do hope.
They have virtually not left Anna's side since, but marvel each day at the progress she continues to make and are forever grateful to all who have played a part in her continuing recovery which, perhaps some time next year, will have her back on the start line.
Reflecting on the events which shattered their life, Katy Hamilton goes back to the start.
"I came home to find a lovely note from Anna which said she had gone for an hour's ride and would be back at 5pm."
As she always did on a training ride, Hamilton had her cellphone with her. That proved a godsend. Hospital staff scrolled through the phone's numbers, and were soon able to contact her father.
Driving home from his Mt Wellington workplace to Albany, he received a call showing Anna's number.
"The first call dropped out but they rang again," said Doug Hamilton. "It was the hospital. I called Katy and headed straight there."
"You can't really prepare yourself for something like this," said Katy Hamilton as she recounted the happenings of the last nine weeks.
"But day by day, step by step, we have marvelled at the way in which she continues her recovery."
In such situations, even the smallest change is seen as a miracle.
The first came 24 hours after the crash which left her sprawled in agony on State Highway 17 near Dairy Flat.
Still unconscious, she responded to inflicted pain - the squeezing of her fingernails. A day later she opened her eyes and began reacting to commands.
The third day was, says her mum, "the most wonderful day of my life".
On a day when the family were supposed to be in Queenstown to watch her brother James competing in a major snowboarding event, Anna began to regain consciousness and squeezed her mother's hand.
With a nurse beside her all the time, Anne soon changed wards and had a five-hour operation on her neck including a bone graft from her hip into a cage on her spine.
"The surgeon [Alastair Hadlow] came out at halftime - two and a half hours into the operation - and said we should get away for a while," recalls Katy Hamilton.
"When we came back at 11 o'clock at night, he told us the operation was a success.
"Apart from the hand squeeze a few days earlier, this was the first time I felt real joy. The work they had to do on Anna's spine was very scary for us. They were almost too open in explaining what they had to do. They don't throw you a crumb. They were very professional and while they explained things with obvious feeling, they never give you false hope.
"They gave us a graphic explanation of what was involved but, if anything, you get greedy. I wanted more. I wanted to see Anna's legs move."
Six days later, this time under another team, headed by Bruce Twaddle, Anna had another operation, this one three hours long, to repair her damaged shoulder and collarbone.
"She was still on a huge number of drugs, including morphine, but the feeling we got from the surgeon and his wonderful team was that they saw Anna as an elite athlete and their aim was to get her back to where she was before the accident.
"I believe they made a special effort. The surgeon's daughter, Rose Twaddle, was head girl at Rangitoto College two years after Anna had been head girl there."
The recovery process continued but her weight dropped. She went from her competition weigh of 52kg to 42kg but is now back to 47kg and "continuing to pack it on," Anna says.
There were side effects.
Her blood pressure dropped so low that when she stood up she fainted.
Determined she would get out of hospital she managed a Houdini act in untangling the tubes "and other bits and pieces" to get out of bed - and fell flat on her face and was whisked back into surgery to have five stitches in a cut above an eye.
By August 12, she was asking her parents, "where's my bike?"
She learned her $6500 pride and joy was a mangled mess in the garage at home.
Ironically, the bike was about the only item of real value left when, a month before Anna's accident, burglars had "cleaned us out"
By August 18, with the aid of electrodes on her left foot, to make her lift it, she was able to take her first steps - three - only with the assistance of a walking frame. But it was another short step on the road to recovery.
"She was always trying to cut a deal to get out of hospital," said her father.
On August 29 - 26 days after the accident which almost cost her her life - Anna Hamilton was "set free" to go home but on a strict 72-hour probation.
"We made sure nothing went wrong," said Katy Hamilton.
NOW, continuing the progress which she hopes will get her back to full fitness and ready to race again, Anna Hamilton takes up her story.
"I'm very happy to be home. I have accepted my situation. At times you are just in the wrong place at the wrong time," she says.
She is now able to slowly climb the stairs to her bedroom, can walk a few hundred metres and hopes to soon be back on a wind-trainer (stationary bike) and turning her legs over.
She accepts swimming will take the most recovery work. She would dearly love to be rid of the full upper body brace she must wear.
"In four weeks I will be out of it. The physios are already telling me when it comes off, they will throw me in the pool. I can't wait."
Asked what she remembers of the crash, she says "very little."
"This is probably a good thing. I was hit from behind so it was sudden and unforeseen."
Any bitterness towards the driver?
"I don't know much about the driver. I haven't wanted to ask yet." Police say the male driver has been charged with careless driving causing injury and will appear on court on October 18
Is Anna now scared to get back on her bike?
"Not here and now. It will be a while before I ride on the road again. The steps back will continue to be gradual - and then maybe a ride in a safe area like around the Albany Stadium.
"I'm sure, though, I will have a heightened awareness of motorists and their capabilities."
And a return to triathlon?
"Yes, more than ever. I'm just treading water until the body says 'go'. Watch this space."
Away from her sport - in which has represented New Zealand in Japan, Belgium, Switzerland, the United States and Australia - Hamilton has been working her way through a Sparc-funded Bachelor of Science degree, majoring in human nutrition, at Massey University on a part-time basis since leaving Rangitoto College in 2004.
Further studies, however, are now on enforced hold until next year.
Hamilton has her sights set on next year's world triathlon championships in Vancouver, Canada.
It would be the chance to compete in her father's home town in front of extended family and the opportunity to line up in a race for which she had been selected at under-23 level this year - dreams shattered days before she was due to leave.
Before her triathlon days, Hamilton competed frequently at Whakapapa as a slalom ski racer.
Her brother, a member of the national snowboarding squad, has his sights on the 2010 Winter Olympics also in Vancouver.
Hamilton's coach Chris Pilone, who guided Hamish Carter to Olympic gold in Athens three years ago, says she must either go out as soon as she is able and ride the stretch of road on which she had her accident, or "never ride it again."
He is amazed at her progress, just as he was at the results of a full-on training session they had together a couple of days before the accident.
"That was the first time I really believed in her as an athlete," said Pilone who took over as Hamilton's coach this year when former coach Jenny Rose moved to Wellington.
He rang swim coach Mark Bone and said "she has got the goods" to be a top class triathlete, probably at the longer distances.
She had hinted at that earlier in the year by finishing second behind Pilone-trained Jo Lawn in the testing Tauranga half-ironman, then winning the under-23 division of the national sprint triathlon and having top three finishes in other events including the national Olympic distance triathlon.
Asked whether they shared their daughter's same enthusiasm about her competing again, her parents said they had no problem with her returning to racing triathlons - in what is a controlled environment.
But they are nowhere near as happy about her wheeling out her bike again and going off alone on a training ride.
