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Read about Katie Piper's inspiring story at her website: www.katiepiperfoundation.org.uk.
A Mum’s Prospective - by Helen Bright
My burns on my arm have healed and only left a slight blemish, my hair grew back and so did my eyebrows. The feeling inside has faded, but I still get reminded from time to time.
My son’s burns on his face will never go away, his toes will not grow back and his fingers will always have a slight bend and one leg will always be smaller than the other.
As a Mum being involved in a fire with your child is one of the worst feelings. Watching your baby all of three years go into operations for hours on end waiting on the ward for the call... “He wants you, he is in recovery and doing OK”... phew he made it again. So many operations we have lost count.
In the middle of the night waking to the beeping noise of the morphine pump running out, turning it off and sneaking down to the nurses so they can reload without waking the sleeping child.
Bandage change was hard enough for me on my burns; the pain is too hard to explain. It is nothing compared to spending two hours at a time changing your child’s bandages with the nurses. The room is hot and the smell not so pleasant, your child has so much medicine on board he is actually smiling, oh and the forgetful drug is not nice when it wears off.
One day Mr 3 decided to pack a patty in the bed because I needed to go down stairs for a drink and have a breather. A grumpy nurse said to me “you should go he will be fine I will sit with him, he needs rules and boundaries or you will have trouble”. I thought that nurse was so grumpy, but I have the utmost respect for her now. If I had let my child rule what I did, then he would still be ruling me now.
21 December 2010 will mark 13 years since our accident, my son is turning 16 in January. He has been to hell and back and I could never take his pain away, all I could do was support him. And all I can do now is support him.
“He is a survivor and so am I”.
You can make it, and so will your child it is tough sometimes. Seek support when you need it, give rules and boundaries to your child. As much as we want to wrap them in cotton wool it won’t help them later. Be thankful they made it through that bandage change and operation and support them to be proud of who they are and what they can achieve.
Proud Mum - Helen Bright.
Worod Altaiy's Story
At the tender age of eleven, I found myself subjected to a small hospital bed that was lovingly adorned by needles and drips. These were all inserted, well, somewhere or another. The experiences I faced on my first night in hospital, after I gained my title of ‘burns survivor’, was much like that first visit to the dentist, or the pain felt when the ill-timed truth about Santa Claus leaks through the mouth of a parent.
Growing up, strangers have forced me to believe that what happened to me was nothing more than a plain tragedy. To me, however, it was nothing more than a rigid stepping stone in my life, isolated from the nearby golden staircase I wished so badly to climb.
Now, before I am blatantly mocked for my insensitive stance towards the accident that changed my life, give me a moment to explain the very details of my, as Lemony Snicket would like to call it, ‘unfortunate event’.
The day I scarred myself permanently, I was no different than any other pre-teen crowding the streets. I was still basing my life on junk food and cartoons. One hand on a clumsy steel-handle, connected to a home deep fryer, the other, glued to Sky remote control, flicking through the ‘hip’ channels, I managed to cause the deep fryer to slip off the counter. Four litres of boiling oil made a home of my face, neck, arm and both legs. I ran into my shower at the end of our narrow hallway, and tried to calm myself down. My meditative strategy seemed to work until my skin began blistering. At this point I must admit I didn’t manage to hold myself together. The rest of that time, and the ambulance ride were nothing more than a blur.
During my time in hospital I screamed, I refused the ‘cocktail of pills’ for dinner, I tried to pull tubes out of my mouth and I cursed. But really, looking back at my experience, I think my actions were nothing out of the ordinary for morphine controlled patient. Minus being told off by nurses for dangerous wheel chair races around the hospital, I think I did pretty well.
I am a seventeen year old girl and covered skin grafts and burns marks. I still seem to find strangers staring unintentionally at the scars that plainly fill my body. But really, what’s the point of getting offended? Instead of wasting my energy on those who believe they are doing nothing wrong by stealing the ‘occasional glance’ at my ‘meshed’ legs, I just ignore them and think of the day my scars will make a damn good conversation starter.
- Worod Altaiy