Mum breaks her neck in freak pole dancing accident

Debbie Plowman, 32, has been laid up for nine months after suffering devastating injuries when she fell from a foot off the ground while hanging upside-down on the pole, breaking her neck and severely damaging her spinal cord.

She is still on a ventilator to help with her breathing and today her husband Chris spoke out about the shocking incident as they try to raise funds for when she is finally allowed to come home.

After the accident - which happened while she was performing a "cross-ankle release" at the class she was attending in York on December 12 last year - she was taken to York Hospital and transferred to Hull Royal Infirmary for specialist care and surgery on her spine and head.

She was then transferred by air ambulance to the spinal injury unit at the Northern General Hospital in Sheffield, where she remains on a ventilator to enable her to breathe. At the moment, she is struggling to communicate and is doing so through a computer that tracks her eye movements.

Mrs Plowman is hoping to move closer to home next month through a transfer to the Lascelles neurological rehabilitations unit in Harrogate, where she is likely to remain for another six months.

Her plight has inspired a fund-raising drive by relatives and friends, including a Three Peaks walk, a sports dinner at York Racecourse this autumn and a sponsored ascent of Kilimanjaro next autumn. Money raised will go to a Trust fund being set up to help Debbie, and also for Spinal Research UK.

Mrs Plowman, who worked at Tesco and has two young children, Jack, five, and Ruby, two, had been doing pole-dancing exercise classes for two years before the accident happened.

Her husband said she was upside down, just a foot above the ground, when she fell on her head and was knocked unconscious. "Fortunately, one of her friends was a nurse and knew what to do, otherwise I think she would have died," he said.

He said he got a call to say his wife had been hurt and rushed to A & E at York Hospital, and realised something was badly wrong when he had to go through to intensive care.

"The whole thing felt surreal," he said. "You feel that these things happen to other people and not to you.

"This has been a heartbreaking experience for me and my two children. Debbie was and still is a fantastic mum, an amazingly beautiful wife and the most caring and honest person anyone could want to meet.

"We have been married for seven years and been together for nearly 14 years. We make a great team, and are a very close couple who are best mates.

"Without the support of my large, strong and close family, and brilliant friends, this would all have been too much for anyone to cope with."