A young Goulburn Valley dairy farmer is set for a year-long recovery after falling from a second-storey window while sleepwalking to “go and milk the cows”.
Abbey Sizer, 18, was staying at a friend’s house near Nathalia when she started sleepwalking in the early hours of Sunday, February 19.
“I reached for the window and opened it thinking it was a door and fell 4.5m,” Abbey said.
“All I recall is being in agony on the ground screaming, rolling around in pain while my friends held me down.”
Abbey was taken to Goulburn Valley Health and later to the Alfred Trauma Centre in Melbourne.
She had shattered her pelvis, had a break and fracture to parts of her spine and her tailbone was out of place.
Abbey’s older brother Nathan Wood, who lives in Queensland, has started a GoFundMe page, with a goal to raise $30,000 to help Abbey through her recovery.
“She’s looking at 12 months’ rehab before she can get back to work, so she’ll have to look at getting on some type of disability support, but it’s going to be a long road and hefty medical cost,” he said.
“She also just turned 18 in September last year and didn’t have ambulance cover as an adult, so we’re still waiting for those bills to come through.”
Nathan said Abbey had always been a sleeptalker and had occasionally sleepwalked, but never to the extent of Sunday morning’s incident.
“It’s scary being so far away and not knowing the severity of it, so I was up all night figuring out what I could do to help,” he said.
“The window was just below knee height and it was already open a little bit so she just pushed it open and put her hand through the flyscreen and fell out the window.
“Her friends remember her saying, ‘I’ll be back, I’ve just got to go milk the cows’.”
Nathan said it would be a hard road ahead for Abbey.
“She’s such an active, outdoors person so this is going to be quite a shock for her,” he said.
“She’s already over it; she wants her independence back.”
Abbey’s fundraiser is online at https://bit.ly/abbey-sizer