Wendy Gielen (24) was washing a horse at work when the animal kicked her jaw in half. There had to be a trauma helicopter and two ambulances. “Fortunately I am a tough one.”
The horse lover was at work, at a breeding in De Moer, when the accident happened. “I got a staircase against my jaw of a horse with horseshoes on the hooves. I thought all my teeth were out.”
The young woman fell on her head. She doesn’t remember exactly how things went from that moment. “I ran outside for help. My jaw was crooked and there was so much blood.” She had a deep cut in her chin, which had to be attached.
She had to be operated on in the hospital. She tells it carefully, because talking is difficult. There is now a plate in her jaw, with screws attached. The next two to three weeks she has to eat through a straw.
“I bite through it.”
“Well, I am quiet under it, I have experienced so much. I will bite through it,” says Wendy. She is especially grateful that it went relatively well and glad she is home again. “I was lucky, they said in the hospital. A few centimeters next to it and I couldn’t have said it anymore.”
The accident does not change her love for horses. “It is unconditional,” she says.
