Abi

Age at interview: 28

Brief Outline:

Abi’s son was 18 months old when he was burnt a hot cup of tea was accidentally spilt onto his chest. At the time of the burn Abi was not with her son, she remembers panicking when she received a phone call to tell her that her son needed an ambulance.

Background:

Abi is 28 years old and has two children aged 8 and 3. Her ethnicity is White British.

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When Abi’s son was 18 months old, he sustained burn injuries to his chest after a hot cup of tea was accidentally knocked over and spilt onto him. At the time of the burn Abi’s son was being looked after by relatives and Abi was not with him. An ambulance was called and Abi was notified by phone about what had happened.

Abi recalls feeling “physically sick” when she received the phone call, and thinking “I’ve got to get to him”. In hindsight, Abi is glad that she was not around when the burn happened because she would have panicked. Initially Abi felt angry and was “baffled” as to how her son had been burnt. Though in time she has been able to praise the actions of his relatives who were looking after them for their quick thinking in administering first-aid and calling an ambulance. For a long time afterwards, Abi felt guilty that she wasn’t there with her son when it happened.

Initially, Abi assumed that her son would need skin grafts and operations, and that his burns would scar. She did not understand some of the terminology that the healthcare staff were using, and would Google certain terms to see what they meant. Abi worried about what the future would look like for her son.

The day after he was burnt, Abi and her son travelled to a specialist burns unit where the healthcare staff dressed her son’s torso with bandages. For Abi, the hardest part of the whole situation was watching her son have his burns cleaned and his dressings changed. Watching her son have his dressings changed was “heart-breaking” for Abi.

Abi worried that she would be judged as a parent if she told her friends what had happened to her son. For this reason, she mainly sought support from family members who already knew about her son’s burn. She feared being made to feel responsible for the burn.

Abi’s advice to other parents going through a similar situation, is to “never be afraid to speak about” and not to torment themselves with thoughts of “what if?”.

Abi said that watching her son’s dressing changes was “the hardest part of the whole thing apart from the incident itself”.

Also, when they changed the dressings, they had to – which was probably the hardest part of the whole thing other than the incident itself – they had to scrape the scabbing to encourage it to bleed, which, obviously, on a baby that they’re having to pin down to do so, that’s absolutely screaming in pain, was horrific, and I remember one of the terms – I can’t remember what it was called – but they did actually explain in a bit of a basic term afterwards that one of the dressings after the first two or three days of it scabbing, they used silver inside the dressing and they said it basically tricks the body into thinking that it’s scabbed over so it heals a lot faster.

And then they had to sort of scrape them and they said “Oh, they’re bleeding, so it’s actually a good sign because there’s blood flow there” and that was all a good sign. But yeah, it was just awful. They did that on the first day and then re-dressed it and then leading up to that it was just changing them and changing them and putting different dressings that had different, like the silver etc., until it was down to just plasters.

The local hospital would only clean and dress Abi’s son’s burn. They told her she needed to visit a hospital with specialist burns service for further treatment.

He was treated as an outpatient at first, in Casualty of the hospital, he was basically just bandaged to keep it clean and less risk of infection. But the hospital that he was sent to in the ambulance, other than to dress it and to keep it clean and safe, they would not treat him because they weren’t a specialist burns unit and, obviously, especially with his age, they would only be willing to get it covered and comfortable and give him pain relief and then they sent him to a different hospital. But that was actually the next day, so we basically took him home from Casualty mummified and then I remember the next day we had to travel all the way to this other hospital that was specialised in it. And, from then, it was sort of all different types of bandages.

After Abi’s son was burnt, she needed to drive daily to her nearest burns unit which was 40 minutes away.

Definitely financially because, I don’t know how many miles exactly, but it takes about 40 minutes each way and this was every day for six days. So, I remember it being quite a tight month. We didn’t get any support with that. I don’t know whether that would have been something we’d have- if we’d sought out, we’d have got support for that but at the time we just paid it and got on with it.

Is that transports costs – was it petrol?

Yeah, we had to drive up. I don’t know. As I’m saying it I’m wondering if there is support or whether that’s if you’re an in-patient. But if there is anything like that maybe make that aware, you know, to parents, even when they’re travelling to and fro, that they can get a little bit of help with that because like I say, we weren’t lucky enough to live right near where we needed to be.

Abi felt very angry towards her son’s dad for a long time and questioned “how could this have happened if he was being watched?”

But I remember after sort of coming to the realisation that I needed to get to where he was and what had happened, one of the first questions that came to me was “Where? How did it happen? How could this have happened if he was being watched?” I remember feeling really angry because, you know, although they’re all his family and it was actually his dad and things, I felt that “Had he have been with me this wouldn’t have happened” which it would have done, it was completely unavoidable, but I remember feeling really angry and just baffled as to how this had happened.

I remember being really, and I regret it now, but I remember being really harsh, shall we say, towards my husband for a long time afterwards because, naturally, being his mum, I felt that I was the best person, that it wouldn’t have happened in my care kind of thing. And I remember being really angry “Where were you? How did you let this happen? You know he’s into everything.” And I remember being really horrible about it. Not dramatically horrible but sort of being a bit judgmental, shall we say, towards how my husband, you know, “You didn’t even go with him in the ambulance” and things, and I didn’t really think that, at the time, it was because it was completely horrific for him. And I do feel bad about that now, but it was just the way I dealt with it, I guess.

Abi wishes she had been offered more support, even though she felt like she “didn’t belong” in counselling for parents of a child with a burn.

If I’m being honest, we weren’t given any support other than, obviously, the surveys and things. But with regards to support for us, there wasn’t really anything, if I’m honest, unless I completely missed it, or whatever, we weren’t given any you know, cards with names on it or numbers, other than that link to ‘If you struggle in the future, this might be a good site for you’ but even then I found the site “Oh, I can’t really use that because that’s for people with…” I felt bad that it wasn’t bad, if that makes sense. So, I felt that I didn’t belong in the counselling for burn victims because mine was going to solve itself, mine was going to go away kind of thing. So yeah, it was difficult. I would have liked the support, but would I have used it, is the question.

I probably would have, initially after everything had calmed down, I would have probably liked to have been offered some support rather than “If you need it, it’s on the back of this” kind of thing. I know that’s pretty much what they’ve done on the form, but they didn’t say, you know “If you’re struggling there’s a helpline.” They just said “Oh, there’s a number there if you need it” pretty much. So, it would have been nice to have been, you know “How are you feeling about it? Are you feeling confident that you can carry this on at home?” and things. It was just a very quick process really.

I’m one of these people that I think “Oh” you know ‘I don’t really have the right to moan because it was …’ but, if I’m being honest, if I was to get counselling for it there’s probably a lot more that would come out, as it were, than I think. But do I want to reopen it, or do I just move on and accept that it happened, and we were really lucky? I’m kind of in limbo with would I have took the support or would I have just got on with it kind of thing?