Crash tale a boost for safety

In the blink of an eye Curtis Mateljan went from being a fit, active 21-year old, to one confined to a wheelchair for four months and years of rehabilitation. Now 13 months on from the car accident that saw him airlifted to hospital and put into an induced coma, Curtis is using his position as a youth officer at the Capel Shire Council to tell his story and promote road safety. “I spent months as an inpatient and outpatient at various hospitals in Perth and Bunbury, I was in a wheelchair for about four months and then moved to crutches,” he said. “I completely shattered my pelvis, ruptured my bladder and did my spleen, diaphragm, my back and had a 30cm cut in my bowel. “I did a fair bit of damage.” The accident happened on May 9 last year at Wellington Dam and Curtis was taken to Bunbury Hospital before being airlifted to Royal Perth Hospital, where he was placed in an induced coma for a week that included a number of emergency surgeries in the space of only a few days. Through his work, Curtis was given an opportunity to speak at a screening and question and answer session for The Ride, produced by Jim Cairns, a documentary about four Australians swapping their wheelchairs for quad bikes. “When I eventually made it back to work the kids that I work with were pretty curious about what happened to me but I didn’t feel like I could tell them unless it was in the right setting,” he said. “We sort of thought we could do a bit of a collab event with the guys who did The Ride documentary. “The idea was just about the journey and how these things can happen so quick. “All it takes is one decision here or there that can have disastrous effects. “These things can happen and they can happen faster than you think.” Curtis says that talk, and any he may do in the future, are worth their while if they have an impact on even just one person. “I was lying if I said it was easy, it was definitely the most difficult part of my life,” he said. “It took me over three months just to be able to stand up at a physio for the first time. “If you can stop one kid, or one person from having to go through things like that, it is pretty valuable. “I told them all, ‘If everything I’ve told you sounds bad, I am pretty much the best case scenario’. “I just don’t want anyone else to have to go through that.”