After six months apart, my ex-boyfriend, Chris, and I decided to spend Christmas 2007 together, just the two of us. We wanted to see if our relationship could be rekindled.

We headed to Tofino on Vancouver Island, which is the ideal getaway. Remote and rugged, its sandy beaches and rocky headlands are pounded by the Pacific.

On Christmas Eve, Chris and I hiked on Long Beach. It is littered with huge logs that have come off rafts used by logging companies to transport them. We clambered on to a monster log that, at 1m in diameter and 4m long, looked as if it had been on the sand for decades. We were a safe 10m from the sea, and watched spellbound as waves as high as double-decker buses broke around an enormous tree stump in the shallows. We joked that you could stand on it with the waves curling around you and not get wet.

For 10 minutes we stood on our log marvelling at the stump. We were about to head home when a rogue wave – twice the size of the others – engulfed the stump, sending a shallow ripple towards us.

“Let’s stay on the log so we don’t get our feet wet,” I said, assuming the sea would swoosh round us.

It didn’t. The water lifted our log, throwing us off balance. We jumped – Chris seaward and me towards land.

The sea receded immediately, sucking my foot under the log on which I’d been balancing. I tried to push it away, but couldn’t. The next wave pushed the log into my knee, submerging me. I couldn’t breathe and thought I was going to die.

My head underwater, I counted four waves that crashed and receded, pushing the log over my thighs, hips and waist like a giant rolling pin. Then I heard “pop, pop, pop” as, one by one, my ribs snapped.

It is weird hearing such violent sounds coming from inside your body. I thought my fragile human frame couldn’t survive this huge log crushing me. When the final wave surged over my head, I realised I had to stand up. But how? I gulped air. I’d been submerged for about 30 seconds, but it felt like for ever.

Adrenaline kicked in and I leapt up. With each step to safety, the pain in my left leg was unbearable, but worse was seeing my knee bend sideways. Pain stabbed my shoulder and every breath was agony.

On the other side of the log, Chris had also been underwater, struggling to get up. He finally succeeded and asked if I was OK. “No – I’m broken.”

Chris draped his jacket over me and ran for help. I sat alone on the beach, desperate to lie down and sleep, but there was no room among the driftwood. My ribs, left leg and right arm were shattered.

Forty minutes later, Chris arrived with medics. Somehow they had to transport me over driftwood and sand to the ambulance, 500m away. They rigged up transport using a square of plywood and a single-wheeled stretcher. Because of my shattered ribs, I couldn’t lie down, so I sat on the plywood with a man holding each corner.

At the tiny hospital in Tofino, medics put in a tube to take the fluid from my lungs. I asked the doctor if I was ever going to run again. He said yes, but I didn’t believe him.

A helicopter came to lift me to Victoria hospital, where doctors confirmed I had 10 broken ribs, a dislocated clavicle, torn ligaments in my knee and a punctured lung. When they moved me, my ribs were like knives lacerating my insides.

On Christmas Day, I called my mother from my hospital bed. “Mum, I’ve had a bit of an accident. But don’t worry.” Of course she was worried, and flew the 2,000 miles from Ontario that day.

With so many broken bones, recovery was tough but the doctor was right: within three weeks, I was back in the gym. Nine months later I had an operation on my knee. My clavicle, which was floating on my sternum, took longer.

The physical legacy is a slight curvature of my spine and some loss of flexibility. The psychological legacy surprises me: in such a near-death experience, you’re totally in the present. I found I was OK with the idea of dying, and remain so.

• As told to Valerie French.

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