Burn Injury Resource Center

From the book "I will not be broken" by Jerry White.

Survivor X was disabled during the civil war that took place in 1978 in Eritrea. In the beginning he was saying "Now my legs are injured, what is going to happen to me?" But this didn't keep him down. He quickly got rid of these thoughts because he realized what happened to him, has happened already and he can't change the past. He stopped thinking about what happened to him and instead started thinking about what he can do. He started thinking about going back to work and taking control of his life, because if he doesn't do that, nobody is going to do it for him. All the bad thoughts that were in his mind were gradually diminishing until they were completely gone.

He now takes care of his elderly mother, and helps cultivate the land for elderly and challenged people in his area. In return for working their land, he shares the produce with them and also get to keep a share for himself. Survivor X doesn't see himself as a challenged person because he was able to work and give back.

From burn survivors throughout the world

Survivor X was living happily with his wife and his three boys. On one day in May while he was alone at home, he was trying to clean his yard and garage from the litter that had accumulated during the winter. He lived in a rural area that allowed to incinerators to burn trash. He started a fire with trash from the yard and as he started to clean the garage, he collected boxes and papers and placed them in the fire for destruction, there were several empty oil containers, somehow he picked a full container of injector cleaner and as he placed it in the incinerator it exploded in his face.

He remembers seeing the skin melt from his fingers as he was trying to put down the fire from his face. When the fire was out, he went inside the house and called 911, they arrived after 5-10 minutes. He was taken by an ambulance were he passed out. In August he was brought out of the drug induced coma and he was allowed to go home at the end of September.

He suffered third degree burns over 48% of his body from the waist to his eyebrows. His nose was burned away and one ear was completely gone as well as most of the other. He lost one eye because of scars covering the pupils; his vocal cords and larynx were damaged because of the flame inhalation. He has battled for seven years with polyps in the larynx affecting the amount of air he inhales. He lost all his fingers and thumbs and had the large toe of his right foot removed and placed on his right hand to give him an opposing grip. He has ongoing surgeries for reconstruction and polyps. The surgeries are not as frequent, but at this point he doesn't see an end to the surgeries.

The survivor says "for me the most important asset I have had in recovery was my family. They have been there with help and encouragement and most of all love". He is not the same person now. He learned tolerance, patience and compassion. He also says" the ability to laugh at ones self when things are not going well may mean the difference between being a survivor and being a victim. The road to a happy life is a lot shorter for the survivor than for the victim".

From the book I Will Not Be Broken by Jerry white.

A burn survivor who was a passenger in a car when it was rear-ended woke up in the burn unit without knowing that she was burned, she doesn't remember the treatment given to her in the emergency room or at the site of accident. Waking up in the burn center and being told that she was burned gave her the impression that she was burned in a war, she asked "Oh, there was a war". Amputation of part of her right hand is one of the first things she recalls after the passage of two to three weeks of being in the burn center. Her memory of what happened in the first few weeks was vague. On the first day in the burn unit, she remembers that she kept asking for her best friend who came and was beside her although that she couldn't see because her eyes were swollen as a result of the burn. She remembers later on how she was in pain and how it was painful especially after the removal of the bandages. She remembers the nurse feeding her and brushing her teeth as she couldn't do anything with her hands. Morphine injection was given to her by the nurse to be followed within 20 minutes by removing the bandages. Despite Morphine injection, the pain persisted. Taking the bandages off in the morning, putting a sheet around her that could not touch her burned head as it causes pain and then wheeling her to the hydro room, returning to the burn unit and putting the bandages again, all caused her pain that she doesn't want to remember. During her hospitalization, she had visitors that provided her with support during this critical period, as she says "I would have died without them". She firmly believes that she would never have been able to go through this experience without the help and support of her friends and visitors as her family was abroad.

She had to wear a face mask as a result of her facial burns, she wore it and it became routine over time. When the time came to permanently remove the mask, she was afraid that people would see her scars and reject her. With time she was able return back to the community and find positive meaning in her injury that allowed her to continue living and thriving.

From the book entitled "Severe Burns" by Andrew M. Munster, M.D. and the staff of Baltimore Regional Burn Center.

According to survivor X, while he was at work, an accident happened that changed the course of his life; he was electrocuted and burned over 45 percent of his body. "Everybody deals with things in their own way, I was eventually able to deal with my accident, but the stages and phases a burn patient goes through in the beginning are sketchy, because the mind has a way of blocking out bad things".

He was taken to a hospital first then transferred to a burn center. In the burn center, when he first woke up, he could remember everything that happened for the first few days, but as the days passed he started forgetting the details of the accident. His head was hurting badly as if something very heavy had been dropped on his head. He finally started to remember that he was in the hospital and why he was there although he didn't want to be there.

He had nightmares in the hospital that people were hurting him but these nightmares subsided after a while. He suffered severe depression. The depression lasted throughout his entire 2 month hospital stay. The depression was more severe in the beginning and less severe toward the end.

One of the phases that he went through in the hospital was thinking that he is losing his mind. He was 19 years old and couldn't believe that he was having these strange feelings of helplessness and depression. His hands were so badly burned that he couldn't move, drink, eat or even go to the bathroom by himself. With the help of a psychiatrist, that he asked to see, who came to see him for a month, he was able to deal with some of these problems.

Before the accident he was a 19 year old tough person who wouldn't tell anybody that he loved them. Another phase is when he needed to let his family know how much he really loved them and appreciated them and he did. He knew that he would never again go to Ocean City and lay on the beach. He had a lot of anxieties that he would never have a pretty girlfriend. Because of his scars, he would never be able to let anybody see him without his shirt.

It's important for the wound healing to have adequate nutrition. For him, one of the hardest things to do while he was lying in bed in pain was to eat a complete meal. It's hard to eat with the lack of appetite. He would take one or two bites then feel stuffed. Although it was frustrating in the beginning, he learned to eat with a fork and spoon that was fastened to a bracelet on his wrist. Once he got the hang of it, he could feed himself. With his will and persistence, he nicely regained a little independence and knew he was on the path of healing and recovery.

Five years after the accident which happened in 1986, he lived in Ocean City with his beautiful girlfriend. Thanks to the support and help of family and friends at the Baltimore Regional Burn Center, he leads a very happy and productive life.

From the book I Will Not Be Broken by Jerry white.

Survivor X lost both of her parents when she was 23 in a flying accident. She suffered guilt feelings and couldn't continue because of her depression. She decided to commit suicide by using a grenade but the grenade exploded while she was trying to slam it against her body. She didn't die but both of her hands were blown off. While she was recovering, she was thinking of when she could try suicide again. One day an amputee visited her; the visitor told her that despite losing her hands; she can still achieve her dream. She was skeptical of what the visitor had told her but the visitor challenged her by asking her to tell him what her dream was. She wanted to be a photographer. The visitor helped her in researching the options that she has leading her to enroll in a photography class. With the help of friends, she was able to buy some photo equipments, and was off the antidepressants. She is pursuing her dream of becoming a professional photographer. She was able to achieve her dream because she let go of the past. The lesson learned: live the future and get moving.

From the book I Will Not Be Broken by Jerry white.

Survivor x lost his right leg while stepping on a landmine. This trauma made him wonder how he was going to work and feed his wife and child. He had to move with his parents as his family had no home. As a result of the accident, he avoided his family, went into severe depression and drank heavily. One day this survivor met another amputee who told him that he has to return back to his normal life taking responsibility and support his family. For the survivor this was overwhelming but his friend insisted that he should do it, the survivor was encouraged and found the support and the willingness with other amputees. It took over a year, but step by step attending meetings and joining survivor support groups, the results were encouraging. With his determination and planning he started a business by building a greenhouse with a thriving tomato business and because of his honesty and hard work, his produce was sold quickly as people lined up to buy them.

He says "Thanks to the support from my community, my family has a strong husband and father again, and with my new business, our future is no longer uncertain".

The survivor didn't stop at that but plans to build a second greenhouse and hire other survivors to work there. He describes becoming a benefactor after being a beneficiary by helping others who are in need, as an incredible moment for him, when he donated 200 Kilograms of fresh tomatoes to a local orphanage. He also helps his neighbors in need by giving out produce.

From the book I Will Not Be Broken by Jerry White.

Survivor X was seventeen years old, on his way to work in a civil war country when he stepped on a mine leading him to the loss of both of his legs. He thought it was a dream. At the time of the explosion he tried to kill himself with an explosive lying on the ground near him but it didn't explode. He was desperate to die as he took a gun from one of the soldiers who arrived after the explosion and begged him to kill him. Recovery was very difficult, both physically and mentally. He was able to survive with the support of his family. Of great import to him, was meeting other disabled persons. He saw how they lived their lives. It made him really happy to see people in wheelchairs playing sports in the hospital.

Although it was a long journey he was very happy and excited about many aspects of his life. He has a wife, children, a family, parents and siblings and a lot of friends.

Helping others was very satisfying for him. Seeing other survivors arrive at the hospital and speaking to them, telling them his experience and how he survived, gave them hope and encouragement. The next time he saw or visited them, they would be expressing different faces of joy and survival "That joy is something that cannot be compared to anything. Wow. I am part of making another person happy".

Each survivor can be a source of encouragement to others, but first he/she has to find the power and courage to continue the journey to the end in order to be able to help others.