Skier Asher Cairns lucky to be alive after accident

Feb 28 2010 by Brian Daniel, Sunday Sun

A NORTH man seriously injured in a skiing accident that happened a year after his sister’s death says he is lucky to be alive.

As reported in last week’s Sunday Sun, Asher Cairns, 35, who was brought up near Alnwick in Northumberland, suffered a fractured skull, neck injuries and a dissected artery after hitting a rock while skiing in the Swiss Alps.

The impact threw Asher, who now lives in the Alps, through the air and he hit his head on another rock, leaving him briefly out cold.

He was winched into a helicopter and airlifted to a local hospital, before being flown to Bern. Doctors at a hospital there operated on his skull, inserting a plate.

The accident came a year and a day after Asher’s sister Eilidh Cairns, 30, died after being knocked off her bike by a lorry in London.

Asher, who has skied since the age of three and has worked as an instructor in the sport, was moved back to the local hospital for two nights last Sunday.

He had the stitches removed from his head wounds and was then allowed to go home to Zermatt, where he has lived around 10 years, on Tuesday.

Doctors are to wait three months before deciding whether the artery has healed enough to allow them to do an operation to fuse together three vertebrae in his neck.

In the meantime, he has been ordered to wear a protective collar, to take a drug to thin his blood, and to rest for six to 12 weeks.

Speaking from the Swiss home he shares with girlfriend Georgie Vann, Asher said: “It is good to be back home rather than in a hospital bed!”