‘They cut a hole in my throat’ ‘They cut a hole in my throat’

• Published date: 25 February 2021

Jordan’s neck was broken and she and her two passengers suffered other injuries when the van they were in and another vehicle collided at Taupō‘s Kiddle Drive-Napier Rd intersection.

On November 6, Jordan, a commercial cleaner and driver for Green Cleaning Services, was driving a work van across from Kiddle Drive to Arrowsmith Ave with two other staff, when the collision occurred.

The impact flipped Jordan’s van on to its roof and spun it around. It ended up facing back the way it had come, its roof crushed.

“I just remember waking up and facing towards the back of the van ... I remember freaking out because I didn’t know what had happened and I couldn’t move.”

Jordan’s passengers suffered whiplash, bruising and broken ribs. But Jordan was worse off. Two vertebrae in her neck were fractured and another was crushing her spinal cord.

She was taken to Taupō Hospital and then flown to the Middlemore Hospital spinal unit. At Middlemore, she had surgery to stabilise the injury.

“They cut a hole in my throat,” says Jordan, indicating a scar at the front of her neck, “and took a bone graft from my hip and stuck it in my neck and put a plate and two screws in there.”

Jordan also had nerve damage to both arms and one of her legs, caused by her crushed spinal cord.

She was in Middlemore for three weeks and then had to stay in Auckland with a friend for another two months to enable her to get to follow up appointments.

At home, daughters Olivia-Grace and Nevaeh-Reign had to go without her for nearly three months and her partner, Michael Floyd, had to cope on his own as well as trying to work.

Nevaeh-Reign has club feet and needs extra care, which Jordan can’t presently provide so she is living with Michael’s mother while Jordan recovers. It’s helpful, but Jordan is sad about not being there for her little girl.

“My 4-year-old just turned 4 and I missed her birthday. I missed our anniversary. I’ve got a 13-year-old who just started high school,” Jordan said, through tears.

“Everything that has come from this accident or from that time has changed a lot of the dynamics of my family. I can’t pick up my child. I can’t drive. My daughter is at my mother-in-law’s and I’m still having to be without my baby. I’m not living quality of life at the moment.”

Jordan was relieved to be able to come home to Taupō earlier this month, even though she struggled with exhaustion and restricted arm movement. But the joy of returning home was short-lived.

Doctors were unhappy with the way...