FOR the past 23 years Georgina Hurst has celebrated what she calls Dead Day - the day she was left clinging to life after a near-fatal car crash with her boyfriend at the wheel.

Surgeons gave her less than one per cent chance of survival.

Aged 24, the former paramedic was left clinging to life and told that she would never walk or talk again.

Now, after an incredible fight back from the brink of death, she has written a book, Unbroken, charting her determined drive to stand up and live life once again. It documents her recovery, her struggles and triumphs along the way, her heartbreak and joy. And it goes on to tell how she discovered, of all things, pole dancing, and how she went back to the man who caused all her suffering.

Dead Day begins as a happy occasion: ‘I can still picture a bunch of bawdy women, sandals abandoned, three Lambrinis down, cackling about their latest escapades and conquests,’ she writes, ‘I felt so happy, basking in my boyfriend’s attention after coming home for the weekend from Liverpool where I worked as a paramedic.’

She was, she writes: ‘tanned, fit and feeling confident in my size ten blue shorts and loose white T-shirt, dark hair recently cut into a bob.”

Later, as she sits in the passenger seat of her boyfriend’s car, his friends, in another vehicle, pull out in front. ‘He was high on sunshine and wanted to race,’ she recalls.

‘The last thing I said to him - in my old voice - was: Please, slow down.’

The collision came at a combined speed of 120mph. Georgina broke her neck and leg, shattered her pelvis, tore her liver, kidneys and bladder, punctured her lungs and caused internal bleeding.

‘I was resuscitated twice at the scene, in a coma for weeks, in hospital for months, then rehab for a year.’

Brought back to life four times, friends and family were told to expect the worst.

Yet, against all the odds, she survived. Determined, she faced life head-on and overcame her horrendous injuries.

Written with ghost writer Becky Bond, the engrossing book describes how Georgina had to learn to speak again ‘and even now, at times, I sound like I’m sloshed.’

Georgina describes the moment she first consumed proper food after being PEG-fed - directly through her stomach - for months. ‘I was still re-learning how to chew and swallow, so mum had to cut it into tiny pieces, but the tastes and textures were out of this world. And the smell. Just the aroma of home cooking lifted my spirits.’

She describes meeting her boyfriend again after his release from prison, how she forgave him and how they briefly rekindled their relationship.

For all its trauma, this is an uplifting autobiography. It is sprinkled with Georgina's ability to see humour in a situation, like the moment she woke up in hospital to hear her mum reading to her. ‘She was reading The Horse Whisperer’…It’s about a girl who was hit by a 40-ton truck while out riding on her horse. Imagine? Only my mum could pick something like that. It does have a happy ending, but still.’

The unending support from her family and friends is documented, with their ‘going above and beyond to brighten me up and cheer me on.’

Determined to defy the doctors, Georgina is determined to walk again. ‘I WILL WALK ONCE MORE’ was the front page headline in the Telegraph & Argus in 2004 as she planned a charity walk around Yeadon Tarn.

In the months following the crash, no-one who knew Georgina could have imagined in their wildest dreams that she would take up pole dancing, yet it was a dream that got her there.

“I literally had a dream that I was watching a pole dancer,” she says in a newspaper interview. “In the dream, I told my friends that I wanted to have a go and they all just looked at me as if to say ‘aw bless her.’

Then I got out of my wheelchair and did it. The dream was so powerful, that when I woke up, I researched some local classes and just got on with it. Honestly, it’s been so liberating.”

In Feb 2021 Georgina survived sepsis after a terrible kidney infection - when her family were told she might not make it - again. But she pulled though.

She has also helped with the vaccination trials for Covid19 because she wanted to be able to give something back to the NHS.

Georgina raised £2,500 for the Smart Risk Foundation, which focuses on injury prevention and has given talks in schools in aid of the charity. More recently she has delivered talks for for Bradford Council, to help schoolchildren see the consequences of taking unnecessary risks. These talks have been put on hold for Covid though, but she's hoping to do more in the future.

Georgina found writing the book alongside Becky cathartic. - "Things kept surfacing that I had forgotten or put to the back of my mind, such as all the things I used to do at work.”

Her stubborn nature has spurred her on day after day. “If someone say you can’t do it I just have to prove them wrong - I keep trying," she says.

Georgina has grown to embrace Dead Day. ‘I’ll never have the body I had before the crash - I still need crutches or a wheelchair - but the life I’ve got is better.’

*Unbroken, The Woman who Walked Again, by Georgina Hurst and Becky Bond is published by Scratching Shed Publishing.