A brave Ayrshire teenager named Sophie Bryce continues to have ongoing surgical treatments to rebuild her face after an horrific car crash involving three other people.
After receiving 83 stitches a fractured nose, cheekbone and collapsed eye socket, Sophie [16 ] still faces more surgery to readjust the metal plate inserted by doctors to mend her eye socket.
Although the young girl still struggles with enduring the scarring the accident left her with, she has chosen to share her story in a bid to warn others and prevent the same scenario repeating itself.
Sophie Bryce and her best friend charlotte Forsyth also 16[who also suffered stitches and whiplash after the crash] had been driving around Ayrshire with friends Andrew Abraheart 20 and the driver Junior Taylor 19.
Taylor receiving 9 stitches in a headwound and Abraheart fracturing his shoulder, when they crashed after overtaking too fast and hitting a dip in the road in their silver Peugeot 106 on the Maybole road in Ayrshire on the 29th of June 2010 .
Sophie had tragically undone her seatbelt after dropping her phone and highlights the importance of wearing a seatbelt at all times during a journey.
Sophie wants to share her story with her peers revealing how it can happen, and did happen in the blink of an eye.
Thankfully Sophie doesn’t remember the impact clearly and explains how her clothes had to be cut from her body while medics worked for 4 hours stabilising her condition.
With her family and best friend visiting her in hospital, she pulled through an accident that could easily have been fatal.
The emotional pain would prove to be another trauma as her face was disfigured with coarse grey stitches.
The mirror in her hospital room was covered with a towel immediately after she regained conciousness, but she would have to face a full two long days of having the stitches painfully removed when the wound healed and then a lifetime ahead of having to wear heavy make up to conceal the red scar tissue.
When most of us would be lost in pain and fear, Sophie recalls being worried her “pa pa” would be angry with her for being there, she was also worried about the blood loss scaring her mum.
Although the perpetrator of this accident was well above the drink drive limit and had no insurance and driving with just a PRIVISIONAL LISCENCE, he escaped with just a £580 fine that would not even cover the cost to the tax payer in medical bills.
Sadly it is Sophie Bryce who will experience the true cost of his recklessness.
Perhaps its her pragmatic approach to things that’s enabled her to cope with it so well as she works hard in a coffee shop in Ayr, bravely facing the public every day. She also studies at Ayr College with plans to eventually join the army in the nursing core.
Crosshouse hospital issue Sophie with two different foundations to cover her face with and they do the trick very well but she still has to face another operation in July 2011.
As a deterrant Sophie wants people to see her photographs, read her story and think twice about who you share a car with.
I commend her for seeking to make her voice heard so we all can learn from her.
Written by Margaret MG
A good story - tragic but educative.
ReplyDeleteCars are like weapons on wheels - but indeed we don't think about it most of the time. When we drive at 50 miles, we are a lethal object at risk of causing death and major injury if anything goes wrong. We should in fact get rid of cars driven by human beings - and this is exactly the conclusion many people are making these days - cars will not be driven by human hands anymore somewhere in the near future. But it is strange that we didn't start to work on this idea much earlier.