Irish elite road race champion Imogen Cotter has
undergone more surgery in Spain, with the latest procedures aimed at fixing the
fractures in her arm.
Cotter has had plates inserted on her radius and ulna bones, the outer and inner bones on the forearm. That fracture had been causing her increasing pain as her recovery from her crash has begun and so it was decided an additional surgery was required.
Her patella was also broken in the crash, when she was hit head-on by an oncoming driver overtaking another cyclist. She has had metal screws inserted into the patella to keep sections of it together.
The Co Clare woman has also had about 40 metal staples inserted into her knee to help the wound heal. She added scans have shown there was “no cartilage left in my right knee”.
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“I’ve got a tough rehab ahead of me to get this knee back functioning normally. But luckily I love a challenge,” she explained, with a bit of black humour. She also has metal stitches in her left arm and further stitches in her left palm.
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While
she knew she had a displaced fracture in her distal radius, it appears the need
to have a plate also insert on her ulna came as a surprise, but that procedure
is now done and hopefully that can aid her recovery.
While
she has tried to remain positive and seems determined to get back into shape
and fully recover, a challenging experience in recent days when having an MRI
scan underlines her condition right now.
She said she had been left “upset and scared” when she was undergoing that scan at a Barcelona hospital and the metal inserted into her leg began to heat up, forcing her to press the emergency button.
Cotter was one of the riders of the season last year; winning the Irish elite road race title in Co Wicklow. She also secured a professional contract with UCI team Plantur-Pura for this season, which is the women’s team owned by Alpecin Fenix.
Cotter was has been settling into life in Girona in recent weeks, which she wrote about on stickytbottle, and getting set for the her first season as a pro but last month was hit head-on by a driver as she was out training.
We wish her well and we’ll catch up with her for an interview when she is feeling more comfortable.
