A brave Perth teenager has been told that she is ‘lucky not to be paralysed’ after a shock trampoline accident fractured her spine.
Tarlia Soulsby, 16, was doing back-flips on her trampoline as she had done countless times before when she landed on her head instead of on her feet.
‘From my ribs all the way down to my ankles it’s really sore, and I can’t move,’ Tarlia told Channel 7 from her hospital bed on Sunday night.
‘It’s really hard to sleep and I can’t do anything.’
Tarlia Soulsby (left) is ‘lucky not to be paralysed’ after a backflip on a trampoline went wrong
Tarlia was rushed to hospital with a fractured spine after paramedics got her off the trampoline
She will now have to spend six weeks flat on her back in hospital, and a further six weeks in a back brace.
But the good news, doctors told the teen’s parents, is that she will walk again, as she had broken six vertebrae but there was no damage to the spinal cord.
It took two crews of paramedics to manoeuvre the teen safely off the trampoline.
‘She was doing a backflip and she decided to try for two, which she had done confidently before,’ her father Chris Gliddon said.
‘And after a second one she landed on her head, obliviously compressing her spine.’
He added that she ‘started screaming’ in pain almost the second she landed, and she knew she was in trouble.
Tarlia is unable to move anything from her ribs to her feet and says it is difficult to fall asleep
Tarlia was doing a backflip (above) as she had done countless times before when she was hurt
‘The doctors said if it was about another inch further in the whole movement together, it would have been paralysing,’ Mr Giddon told Perth Now.
The accident will most likely delay Tarlia starting Year 11 in 2018, but her parents and friends are determined to spend as much time as possible by her side as she recovers.
A GoFundMe page has been set up to help Tarlia and her family with medical and rehabilitation costs which as so far raised $525.