With her slim body, blossom face and long, glossy hair, Katrina Burgess has all the attributes of the aspiring model that she is. But behind her normality is a story of agony and extraordinary fortitude.But now after being put back together with 11 metal rods and enough pins and screws, Katrina has been signed up by a modelling agency. Katrina recently told how surgeons saved her life after her car crashed into a ditch as she travelled towards her home town of Weymouth, Dorset, in January. She punctured both lungs and broke her neck, her pelvis, her left leg several ribs and her back. Surgeons at Musgrove Park Hospital in Taunton, Somerset, said that without surgery to help the bones to fuse, her spinal injuries in particular could lead, risking death.

But this process also carried a chance that Katrina could die, or be left paralysed. Doctors inserted a rod from her hip to her knee in her left leg the day next day, she was admitted to hospital. It was fixed inside with four titanium pins. They opened her back and inserted six more horizontal rods up the length of her back to give support to her spine. After a week, they inserted a titanium screw to the top of her spine to support the break in her fragile neck. She amazed the doctors by taking her first steps just a few days after the final surgery. Immediately after seeing her photos on the Internet, London’s BASE Models got in touch with Katrina and signed her to the agency.