It was June 2014, three months after my 17-year-old daughter Maisie and I moved into a small terrace house. I had split from my husband and was working as a painter and decorator. It had been chucking it down all day, and I felt a bit unwell, so after a takeaway with Maisie, I decided to have my first bath in our new home. Maisie perched in the (ground-floor) bathroom with me and we talked about anything and nothing for a while. Not 10 seconds after she’d left the room, I heard the loud noise of a car outside. Its exhaust was screaming, as if the pedal was flat to the floor. I knew something was going to happen, but not to me.

Then it hit. Suddenly I was lifted 4ft in the air, flung through the bathroom wall into the back yard and left lying, naked and soaking wet, on the concrete. There was a deathly silence. My mouth and nostrils were full of dust and rubble.

Bricks kept falling on me. I couldn’t move. I just thought, “Oh God, Maisie”, and this voice came out of me, calling for her in terror. I felt her kissing my face and she started lifting the bricks off me. I managed to wriggle my toes, and realised that I wasn’t paralysed.

There was a lad standing over us: the driver. Maisie screamed at him to move bricks. He just said, “It’s not my fault. I had a blowout”, then disappeared. Another lad put a coat over me. Soon, the yard was full of paramedics and the fire brigade. It felt as if they were on top of me as I lay there, for two hours, while they shored up the house. At no point did I think I was going to die. The main thing was the pain, and the concentration it took to breathe. Eventually, they put me on a board, then a stretcher, and into the ambulance. They gave me ketamine – it felt like a disco – and drove a short distance before transferring me via air ambulance to Coventry hospital.

My mum and sister said, “You’ll be OK, Ang”, then turned a funny colour as they took in the state of me. The doctors reeled off my injuries: broken ribs, punctured and collapsed lung, five broken bones in my back, a smashed pelvis, slight brain injury. My toes and left ear were almost severed and every part of me was cut to shreds by tiles and bricks.

I was too poorly for surgery. Instead, they wedged me into a bed and turned me more than once an hour for days. As much as I didn’t think I would die in the accident, in hospital I wanted to. The pain was so much that if there had been a button, I’d have pressed it.

I was in hospital for 13 weeks. Before my accident, I was like Wonder Woman: I worked, ran every morning, went horseriding daily and played hockey twice a week. So, when I left hospital in a wheelchair, I was terrified. Mum moved into a new house with us. I had doctor’s appointments almost every day and was sick from all the tablets, but, through sheer determination, I got myself on to crutches.

The nurses brought me jigsaws, but I couldn’t bear thinking that this was all there was to life. Maisie suggested painting and I started blobbing out pretty colours. Then I painted an animal picture from a magazine and realised that perhaps I had some talent. It became a huge part of my recovery, and last year I was accepted as a contestant on the BBC’s Big Painting Challenge, which was really good fun.

When we finished filming, I took myself off all my medication. I now manage my chronic pain with paracetamol, acupuncture and exercises, although I go to bed at 7pm because it gets too much. I still have counselling.

The lad driving the car was jailed for two and a half years; he’d been going over 70mph. I wanted to see the good in him, but he never said sorry.

I’m 46 now and feel as if I’ve got to start from scratch. What happened has utterly changed me. I wouldn’t say I don’t like the person I am, but I don’t like her as much. I can’t run and I’ve been to watch hockey, but it frustrates me. I visit my horse, March, and even climbed on her once. One day, I’ll take part in dressage again. If someone tells me I shouldn’t do something, a bloody-minded determination tells me I will.

• As told to Deborah Linton. Do you have an experience to share? Email experience@theguardian.com