Pin-up girl: The teenage model whose body is held together by 11 rods after 70mph car crash

Pin-up girl: Katrina Burgess is held together by 11 metal rods after a horrific car crash. She has since been signed up to a modelling agency

With her slender figure, fresh face and long, glossy hair, Katrina Burgess has all the attributes of the aspiring model that she is.

But behind the facade of normality is a story of agony and extraordinary fortitude.

Katrina, 17, was told by doctors she may never walk again after surviving a 70mph car crash with a broken neck and back, and a catalogue of other injuries.



But after being put back together with 11 metal rods and enough pins and screws to send an airport security detector into overdrive, Katrina has now been signed up by a modelling agency.

Yesterday she told how surgeons saved her life after her car left the M5 and crashed into a ditch as she travelled towards her home town of Weymouth, Dorset, in January.



She snapped her back, punctured both lungs and broke her neck, her pelvis, her left leg and several ribs.

Surgeons at Musgrove Park Hospital in Taunton, Somerset, said that without surgery to help the bones to fuse, her spinal injuries in particular could deteriorate, risking death.

But the procedure also carried a chance that Katrina could die, or be left paralysed.

She said: ‘I was really scared about the surgery, but I didn’t have any other option. Without the pins I wouldn’t have any life at all.’

Doctors inserted a rod from her hip to her knee in her left leg the day after she was admitted to hospital. It was secured inside with four titanium pins.

The most risky operation came a week later.



They sliced open her back and inserted six more horizontal rods up the length of her back to support her spine.

A week after that, they inserted a titanium screw to the top of her spine to support the break in her fragile neck.

Katrina said: ‘It felt strange when I woke up after having it, my neck felt weird and I couldn’t sit in certain positions.



‘But I was so relieved when I could feel my legs.



'Just a day after the last operation I stood up and then took my first steps straight away.

Lucky to be alive: Katrina shows the scar on her back from surgery that involved inserting metal rods into her spine Katrina has signed to a model agency just five months after this horrific car crash

‘It was a great feeling being able to walk after three weeks in bed.’

Astonishingly, five months on from the crash, the teenager has recovered to the point where she no longer even needs painkillers.



Katrina, whose 43-year-old parents Sarah-Jayne and Michael are divorced, will need a series of follow-up checks to make sure the bones are healing, but is otherwise in good health.

She had hoped to become a police officer, but her injuries mean she will struggle to fulfil the fitness criteria so she is considering a career in nursing.

Miraculous: This X-ray shows one of the pins in Katrina's spine

In the meantime, she is looking forward to starting working for BASE models, a London agency which approached her after seeing her pictured in a local newspaper report of her accident and recovery.

Sarah Hawkins, head booker at the firm, said: ‘Katrina is very fresh faced and she will work well for our family and teenage jobs.



'We will be keeping her on our books for any upcoming jobs in the area.’