I was twenty-six years old when I received a
second-degree burn on two percent of my body. Now two percent doesn’t sound
like much but when you’re having your hand debrided twice a day IT IS a very big deal!
I was staying with my parents and working in the Pharmacy
at Kaiser Permanente
Hospital in Richmond , California
I was unfamiliar with my parent’s kitchen because this
was my first visit to their new home. I was also not familiar with the circular
knobs on their stove. I had cooked bacon for breakfast that morning and thinking
that I had turned off the burner, I
had actually turned it on high and
left the pan on the stove to cool. My daughter, Kristen (4), and nephew, David
(12), were watching cartoons while I continued to get ready for work at the
other end of the house.
Suddenly David came into the bathroom yelling that
the pan was on fire. I ran to the kitchen to find flames licking the cabinets
above the stove. Now I had been well versed on how to put out a stove fire, smother
it with a lid or salt or soda, but I was in a strange kitchen and my mind didn’t
react quick enough to think where my mother might have stored these things. The
flames were beginning to singe the cabinets and my thought was that I needed to
quickly get the pan away from the stove. My mom had a big double aluminum sink
and I decided if I could set the pan down inside the sink, it would be safe there
until I could find a lid.
The children stood back and watched as I made my first
successful trip across the kitchen to the sink. Unfortunately, there were
curtains above the sink and they also began to singe. Then I really lost all logic and began to panic. I jerked the pan out of the sink with
not a clue as to what I would do with it next but when the flaming grease
sloshed out of the pan, over my hand (my right
hand), and up my arm, I knew exactly what I would do—I dropped it! When the pan
hit the floor, the grease and flames disbursed in all directions. David had the
foresight to get my parents out of bed and they came running. My mom threw a
towel over the flames on the floor and then quickly put my hand in a bowl of
ice water. She took one look at my skin and started to cry.
I said, “Mother, it doesn’t even hurt.”
“But it will,
honey,” she said. “It will!” She knew exactly what I would be
going through shortly. As a young girl in Arkansas, she had burned her back
when she tried to get warm at her family’s wood stove and caught her gown on
fire. I found out later that the reason I didn’t immediately feel pain was that
the nerve endings were burned. They came to life with a vengeance, however, and
oh, what a wakeup call I received! I’ve never known such pain.
My dad got the car keys and I was whisked away to the
nearest hospital which was about five miles. Pain meds were administered and all
was a blur after that until I heard the doctor say that he would have to cut
away the dead skin. Then I saw my burned hand for the first time and it looked
like someone had taken a knife and cut down the center laying the skin open. It
was hanging loose on both sides. At this point I was able to handle the pain with
medication and thought that I might survive. After the treatment was completed,
I was sent home.
The next morning my mother took me back to the hospital
to have the wound debrided. I had never
heard the term before but it came to be something I dreaded.
Debriding: to
remove unhealthy tissue; the surgical removal of lacerated,
devitalized, or contaminated tissue.
The
process was to remove my dressing, scrub
off the dead skin, reapply the cream, and redress the wound. My mother was taught how so she could perform the task twice a day
and twice a day we both suffered through it. Eventually, the debriding wasn’t
necessary and new skin began to form, but it was so thin that any little bump
would break it open. This new skin had a bluish color and was so shiny that it
looked like a glazed donut to me—a blueberry glazed donut!
The doctor checked me regularly and quickly encouraged me
to begin using my hand. The philosophy,
of course, was that if you don’t use it, you lose it! He knew if I didn’t begin
to manipulate my fingers and wrist, they would freeze in that position and I
might never regain the use of my hand. Pain was still my companion and even
pulling the refrigerator door open, much less turning a doorknob, was something
I avoided.
On one particular trip to the doctor he alleviated the
problem. He knew my hand was becoming stiff so he held up my arm and bent my
fingers and wrist backward. I thought I would hit the ceiling and I thought I
would hit him, too, but it was just what I needed to break through that barrier.
Little by little healing and use came back to me. The
first was the least burned area of my arm, then down to the back of my hand,
and finally my forefinger. The last places to heal were my knuckles and wrist. Because
I maneuvered them so frequently, the new skin would continually break open and
the healing process would be extended again. I returned to the pharmacy and used my
typing skills, which was good physical therapy for my hand.
In searching for the positives I remembered my legs
were saved from being burned. We later found little burn holes all over the
pants legs of my slacks. I also had on a short sleeve blouse that Saturday so
the flames didn’t catch my clothes on fire.
It was a year before I could bring myself to cook bacon
again. I believe this is also the reason why I don’t like to cook today.
The scar is still there. Now my left hand looks normal
for my age but my right hand looks about 75 years old. Most people don’t even
notice the scar unless I point it out to them. I see it every day and thank God
that the years have diminished the incident in my memory.
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