My burns ordeal (From Daily Echo)

My burns ordeal

11:30am Tuesday 3rd August 2010 in

• Skip social links
• Print
• Email
• Comments(0)

YOU could search high and low but there is one thing you will never find here.

“There are no mirrors at all,” says former burns unit patient Tracy Savage. “I did ask but they said they would rather not give me one.

“It wasn’t until I got home two weeks later that I saw my reflection for the first time after my accident.” Her eyes filling with tears, she adds: “I was so nervous beforehand and when I did it, it wasn’t me looking back. I looked so ill.”

A freak accident in March this year led mum-of-four Tracy to the burns unit at Salisbury District Hospital.

She exploded in a human fireball after a series of everyday domestic chores spiralled horribly out of control.

Doing the housework one day, Tracy went into the kitchen and turned the hob on to light a scented candle.

Forgetting she had left the gas on a low flame, she was distracted when her son called her to say an automatic air freshener had broken in his bedroom.

Removing the aerosol refill, the 44-year-old saw that it was still quite full but that the nozzle had broken off.

Returning to the kitchen with the broken canister, Tracy left it on the side – about three feet away from the lit hob – when her son called her away again to help him decide how much to bid on a car on eBay.

When she came back to the kitchen 15 minutes later, she picked up the faulty refill.

Turning around, the movement caused the oil to interact with the hob’s naked flame, and the canister exploded - Tracy was suddenly engulfed by flames.

“It was dreadful,” she says. “I was on fire but couldn’t put it out. I tried pouring water on myself and wrapping myself in a towel but nothing worked.

“I ran upstairs and ripped my burning clothes off. I started bucketing water over myself and looked down at my arms. I could see that the skin had peeled right off, from my shoulders to my wrists.

“I didn’t know whether to keep splashing water on my face or my hands. I decided to continue with my face which is why my hands are so bad. Half of my face still got badly burnt and I lost a lot of my hair.”

Whisked from her Basingstoke home by ambulance, her local hospital quickly transferred Tracy to the specialist burns unit at Salisbury.

She would spend the next two weeks there, recovering from her horrific injuries.

“My hands were elevated in slings for two weeks and wrapped in plastic bags full of cream. Every day they used a scalpel to skin the blisters off my arms and scrape the loose skin off before re-dressing them. I was given morphine and strong painkillers.

“They offered me a skin graft on my right hand but I decided not to because I didn’t want to be in hospital any longer and the results weren’t guaranteed.”

Today almost five months on, Tracy is living proof of the great results that can be achieved by modern medicine.

Her arms have healed extremely well, and while she is wearing specialist make-up on her face, it is impossible to tell.

“I can’t praise and thank the staff highly enough for what they have done. They really do work miracles.”

However her life has been turned upside down and she is still struggling to come to terms with it.

“It affects my life in so many ways,” Tracy says. “For the next two-and-a-half years, I can’t do the things I want to as a mum. I can’t take my kids to the park or the seaside because I can’t be in the sun too long. If I am, I come up in blisters. I have to live in the house. I have to use special cream four times a day. I get bad flashbacks and still can’t understand what happened.”

Lynne Newall, treated at the Salisbury Burns Unit

Retired Lynne Newall, 61, of Highcliffe was admitted to the burns unit last November after she poured petrol on a bonfire.

After sustaining serious burns to her neck and chest, she had to stay in hospital for three-and-a-half weeks.

Lynne still has to wear a plastic splint around her neck to help stretch the skin, and returns to the hospital for a check-up every six months.

“The staff here are absolutely fantastic,” she says. “I couldn’t fault them in any way. They don’t just look after your burns, but your psychological needs too.

“My experience has made me very jumpy about heat and flames. For weeks I couldn’t turn the gas on in the kitchen or the gas fire. I do occasionally get flashbacks and bad dreams that upset me but they are getting less now.

“It’s one of those experiences you never forget, instead you learn to cope with it the best you can.”

Six-year-old Jasmine Neil

Six-year-old Jasmine Neil from Jersey suffered nasty burns to her leg when a fun day at the beach turned into an emergency situation last September.

Two hours after enjoying a barbecue with her family, it was time to go home.

As her parents threw away the disposable barbecue, which was now cool enough to touch, Jasmine continued to play.

Jumping through the sandcastle on which the barbecue had sat, she dragged her foot through the hot sand.

“At first we thought she had been stung by a bee but then we saw her skin was peeling off,” explained her mum Sue.

“It was such a peculiar accident. Two hours later we didn’t expect the sand to still be hot.

“We ran as fast as we could and dunked her in the sea. Because we don’t have a specialist burns unit in Jersey we had an ambulance flight over that night.

Jasmine had to stay for two-and-a-half weeks after sustaining burns to her foot and lower leg, even celebrating her sixth birthday on the unit.

Her injuries have healed naturally, and the family has returned around six times for check-ups.

“We think the world of this place,” added Sue, a school secretary. “Because we weren’t local, if the staff hadn’t been so fantastic it would have been more of a traumatic experience. One minute we were on the beach and the next we were somewhere where we didn’t know anybody.”

Salisbury Burns Unit

“You can’t be squeamish if you are going to come into this,” says Senior Nurse Heidi Lewis who has worked at Salisbury’s burns unit since 1989.

“Burns are really serious. People often underestimate them. You have to replace the fluid that is lost and they need careful management.

“A significant burn is going to leave a big wound. You have to have patience as a big burn can take two hours to dress.”

With 17 beds, the unit plays host to everyone from newborn babies to 100-year-olds.

Covering a wide area including Hampshire, Wiltshire, Dorset, the Isle of Wight and the Channel Islands, last year the unit treated 2,000 people, including 321 people who had to be admitted.

So what sort of injuries are they coming in with?

“Hair straighteners are a really big problem at the moment,” says Heidi. “They reach very high temperatures and people leave them lying around. People sit on them or stand on them or children pick them up.

“Barbecues on the beach are another common one. People can tread on charcoal that gets left behind or sometimes they put accelerants on barbecues and they flare up.

“Elderly people can fall against radiators and not be strong enough to get up. Or children can get scolded quite easily, say, if a parent makes a cup of tea and thinks it’s out of reach but it’s not or they get in bath water that’s too hot. “People might be cooking and their sleeves can get caught, and every year we see people who get sunburnt. A child last year had to stay in for five days.

“We still see a few house fires too but the hard work of the fire brigade and smoke alarms has reduced the risk. “People moan about health and safety but I think it’s made a real difference. For example children’s clothes are now flame retardant.

“However there will always be something new like hair straighteners coming along, and will people ever stop themselves getting sunburnt? Probably not.”

Opening in 2006, the unit boasts a wealth of facilities including single rooms for all patients and a theatre, where surgeons conduct a range of operations from skin grafts to major reconstructive surgery.

All patients have access to a psychologist - post traumatic stress is common - and a support group called B.U.G.S. (Burns Unit Group Support) is celebrating its tenth anniversary this year.

“We have a dedicated team from the consultants through to the cleaners,” says Heidi. “Everybody who works here is very proud of the unit.

“We just want to get everybody as well as we can and hopefully back to the life they led before, or as close to it as possible.”