Suzanne Trivett says she has a $100,000 face. That's how much she's spent on surgery since her horrific accident 20 years ago.
She nearly died in a chance crash when a tree fell on her car as she was driving. The driving seat - and the driver - were crushed.
She was trapped with her face broken into countless parts. But fate and great human kindness intervened: a passing nurse got into the back seat and held her hand to keep her conscious. If she had lost consciousness, that would have been the end.
"I feel I've been very lucky in my unluckiness," she says today as she reflects on the trauma which came from nowhere on the afternoon of September 18 in 2002.
In heavy wind, a tree came loose from its roots on the side of Northbourne Avenue in Canberra. It fell into the car's path, with its branches crashing through the windscreen onto her.
"I thought I was dead because the windscreen was wrapped around my head like a halo, and all the leaves were swirling round."
Her face was bleeding heavily. She had what is called a LeFort fracture, one where multiple parts of the front of the skull are broken vertically. "It was a Grade 2. Grade 3 and you are dead," she says.
Her nose was destroyed. "My face was actually swinging. I thought it was going to fall off," she says.
She had to be cut free from her Honda. While the roof of the car was being hacked away, with her lying barely conscious in the crumpled front seat, a woman in a nurse's uniform appeared and just talked to her.
"She came and sat on the back seat and took my hand. She asked me my name, and who was the prime minister.
"She saved my life. Without her, I would have lost consciousness, and then I would have choked."
Since surviving that closest encounter with death, she has had 36 operations, the latest only 18 months ago.
Despite that, she is ebullient and grateful.
Grateful for life, and all the small delights which might pass most people by unnoticed - like a comfortable bed, with crisp, clean sheets. "I got into bed last night with my little dog cuddled up and I felt so lucky in the fresh linen."
The fresh sheets remind her of the linen on the bed in Canberra Hospital 20 years ago: "I remember that when I landed in hospital I felt like I had gone to heaven with all of those fresh sheets and a lovely pillow."
She has got used to hospitals ever since. She's had plates, pins, screws and chips inserted - and then removed when they came loose with time. "My nose collapsed. I had to have a new nose."
"This is a $100,000 face. We've added it up," she says.
After the crash, she was unrecognisable and gradually her look has changed. Today, she is elegant and vibrant in her 77 years.
She spent weeks in hospital immediately after the crash - her first bed was in a maternity ward because it was only one free. She said the period in hospital was like an out-of-body experience: it was as though she was watching herself in a movie.
The difficulty with rebuilding a face is that each stage takes time. Each new stage can only happen when the body has recovered from the previous one.
As she recovered, she decided to sue the ACT government. She said that the tree that fell on her car was a Eucalyptus elata, commonly known as the river peppermint or river white gum. It was planted abundantly in the ACT but has very shallow roots - which meant it fell over in high winds. The trees were unsuitable for the sides of busy roads.
"They are indigenous to Tasmania and the roots don't go down. They turn back so the trees are unstable," Ms Trivett said.
"This one fell on me, and they replaced it with the same tree," she says.
Eventually, more in the city fell and the policy was revised. But the victim of the tree sued the planter of the tree - Suzanne Trivett sued the government of the ACT.
David sued Goliath. The fight was hard and long but she eventually won a sum which she is not allowed to disclose. "But not enough," she says. "If it had happened in NSW, it would have been a million dollars," she adds - in NSW, the law is different.
Despite it all, she remains positive. The lesson she draws from the life-changing experience is: "Don't sweat the small stuff."
"I do believe that I was meant to have the accident because it took me in a different direction afterwards," she says. It made her look at life differently. She has strong spiritual belief of a non-formal kind. She thinks that the surgeons healed her body but her own spiritual strength helped her heal her mind.
She explains her spiritual belief in her memoir, Karmic Connections.
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