Poor Natasha Richardson (Liam Neesons wife)

[nametaken]

|I hope she's gonna be OK

here

Oh, get a helmet. After reading this, I can't let DD go without one, and I don't want to stop going.

The sad truth is, freak accident or not, Natasha would probably be cuddling up with her kids now if she'd had a helmet. I'm not allocating blame here, I hasten to add.

It's a hard, slippy surface - snow (by all accounts), ice rink (obviously). It makes sense. It's only because we're embarrassed that we're hesitating. Maybe Natasha felt the same, maybe she didn't.

I want my kids to enjoy exciting sporting activities, but I want to limit the potential for death as much as poss! If we all put them in helmets, then we might not be the only ones at our rinks this weekend.

It's disappointing that the life of this extraordinary, illuminating woman of stage and film has been reduced to ...

1. She's Liam Neesom's wife.

1. She wasn't wearing a helmet.

All of the papers seem to have a piece by a doctor beside this item saying how easy it is to damage your head by hitting it against anything. Where does this leave toddlers? My 19 month old dd can, like most toddlers, fall and hit her head. Surely she can't be in danger of brain damage on each occasion?

I'm quite depressed by the brackets too, Desi.

It's very sad

@ thread title too...

re toddlers falling, ecmr, they are a lot nearer the ground & fall differently (they have a low centre of gravity & kind of roll down generally)

Natasha's fall sounds as if it might have smack down from vertical on to the back of her head - ski slope snow is packed down by a sort of stamping machine to make it hard & slidey so that you don't sink through it - a bit like falling onto frozen ground or concrete.

It's a horrible story.

Have been skiing to Tremblant a year past January. The nursery slope there is tiny, and I mean tiny, it is hardly even a slope. When we were there we were really shocked by the amount of accidents, people being taken into ambulances on stretchers. I'm not saying for a fact that Tremblant is more accident prone than anywhere else but we saw a lot more than we have seen elsewhere IYSWIM.

The conditions in Temblant at that time were very, very cold (-34 degrees C) and there was quite a lot of rain. That made for some very dodgy slopes full of ice, crud and whiteout. We spoke to people who said that was pretty normal. I didn't feel very safe there and took it very easy the whole time.

I saw kids with helmets on in Tremblant but not adults.

What a shame, poor woman

Oh, no. I think it's an incredibly sad story. I totally agree that it shouldn't be reduced to her being Liam Neeson's wife or that she wasn't wearing a helmet. That's certainly not what I'm trying to say.

As well as feeling sadness for Natasha and enormous sympathy for her family, the nature of accidents surely focusses your mind on your own risks, doesn't it?

My ds (4) wore a helmet for skiing, sledging etc but it didn't occur to me to get one for myself. Ds also wears a cycle helmet for both his bicycle/scooter/skateboard. In fact he is the one who reminds me to put it on him. It does sound as if she must have hit something pretty solid even if it was on piste.

Thanks Ponders for that reassurance even though my dd can fall straight back and hit her head quite hard.

Agree with UnrealisticExpectations - such a horrible story and really makes you think about how random and serious simple accidents can be. The advice seems to be that any head injury should be checked out in A&E.

The poor lady's away dead.

Oh, her wee boys. Her mother. Can't think of anything worse, tbh.

It is just horrible. It must have been a freak accident - when you think of the number of people who ski, year after year. I've been ski-ing since I was seven/eight - and can't imagine how you would have a fatal injury on a nursery slope. I mean, clearly it happened, but it seems so strange. It would be unusual to hit your head as well - you almost always fall over sideways, with your bum/thighs breaking the fall.

For those worrying about helmets - I don't think I've ever seen an adult wear one on the slopes, but then I usually go in France, and maybe they're more popular in the States. Kids do. But then they're usually learning, so more likely to fall more frequently.

I may get flamed for saying this, but even something like this still wouldn't convince me to wear a helmet. I think a very rare, freak accident is just that - a very rare, freak accident.

So so sad. It does seem like a freak accident. And maybe as she was having lessons and was a beginner she didn't feel she needed a helmet. I read somewhere she hit the left side of her face so it does seem like a sideways fall.

I have never seen her in many films - I think I have only ever seen her in Parent Trap so I knew her more for being Liam Neeson's wife and I have a bit of a soft spot for him.

Feel so sad for her family - especially her boys.

We went to Italy at half term and doggedly wore helmets, even though there were only ever a handful of adults wearing them and we felt like complete prats.

I can't see a valid reason for not wearing them - as someone said, they're less itchy than a hat, and warmer, so I'm wondering what the reasoning is for those people who insist they'd never wear one.

Okay, these are freak accidents, but I'd like to avoid serious injury or death from a freak accident thank you.

And, for me, I'm not so much scared of me making a mistake or mis-judgement and falling, it's the idiots who career down the slopes with no control and seemingly no awareness that there are other people around that make me feel vulnerable.

I can only conclude that this is a matter of aesthetics - you just don't look cool in a helmet. Very sad.

Hard to believe someone so young and attractive and talented could be...gone.

I am struggling to understand if she could have been saved if she had sought immediate medical attention after her fall. According to reports, she fell ill only an hour or so after falling and then went to hospital. I wonder what would have been done for her immediately after the fall (given she did not appear concussed) that was not done during that initial hour.

I always wear a helmet skiing in France as do my friends. When meeting up with my friends I always watch out for them coming down the slope and used to be able to pick them out from far away as they'd be the ones wearing helmets. I noticed last month I kept thinking it was them and it was other people wearing helmets. There were a lot of people wearing helmets.

And I think they do look cool. I've got a Shaun White helmet and its very cool. All (nearly) the young, cool snowboarders wear helmets.

It is so, so sad, isn't it. I was watching the footage on Sky late last night and she looked so vibrant and happy. That poor, poor family.

I've got to agree with Nontoxic, Buda and Longtalljosie. (Which might sound contradictory.)

Freak accidents do happen - all the time. My friend's ex-hubby was seriously brain-damaged falling out of a golf cart! The closest I've come to a golf cart is seeing one on telly but you'd think riding in one would be a fairly risk free activity and not one that even I'd be worried about.

My worry about skiing/skating is that people who may prefer to wear helmets currently feel embarrassed about it. DD is probably going to be the only person on our ice rink wearing one this weekend, but kids will be pedalling away on grass in the park fully kitted out and nobody will look twice. Maybe we should be insisting kids wear helmets for such activities. That way, kids would be protected and adults would get used to seeing helmets and feel less embarrassed about wearing one if they'd feel happier doing so.

I wouldn't want to force any adult into wearing one if they didn't want to.

Apparently they call this type of brain injury "talk and die syndrome". You suffer a very minor head injury and seem to be completely fine but for some freak reason it causes a serious intracranial bleed.

It is possible that very early intervention would be possible to stop the bleed but in this case it would appear that the gravity of the injury wasn't detected quickly enough - or perhaps the bleed wasn't accessible, who knows.

It is apparently a very very rare form of brain injury. She has simply been extremely unlucky.

Her poor family.

dh was taken straight to hospital and scanned despite being conscious and talking. )probably was in scan an hour after the accident) he went downhill very quickly but because they already knew he had a bleed they had organised the air ambulance to take him to the neuro hopsital 2 1/2 hours drive away and get him into surgery asap. he was given 20% chance of survival.

without a doubt that saved his life. i first saw him about 2 hours after the accident and the air ambulance was already booked. talking to his friends who were with him at the time, he was laughing and joking with the first aiders on scene and they merely taking him to hospital as a precaution. i was told to go the hospital to collect him and bring him home. when i got there they told me he was being transferred for surgery and i was to call his next of kin (parents).

it's very fast.

mwita that must have been so worrying, glad he's OK. How come he was treated when he seemed OK immediately afterwards?
Is there anything that can be done in the event of a head bump to avoid this sort of thing? Or was this really a one in a million freak accident? It seems to me that everything was done right - they just watched for signs of concussion

Madwoman that is dreadful. Life is so fragile, perhaps we think of these things as "freak accidents" because otherwise we couldn't cope with the fear of how precious and vulnerable life really is.