Burn Injuries

I remember somebody telling me, a surgeon, that she’d be able to play the piano, she wasn’t going to lose as much of her fingers, and he thought she’d be able to play the piano, and I was like ‘Oh my God, thank God, she can play the piano. That’s amazing!’ And then, the following day, another surgeon came in and said, ‘You know, I know you’ve been told this, but she’ll never be able to play a piano.’ And I burst out crying in, like, despair of my child wouldn’t be … my six-month old baby won’t be able to play a piano! It’s … it all sounded so … I was so disappointed and a couple of hours later me and my husband were walking down the corridor and I burst out laughing and he said, ‘What are you laughing at?’ and I said, ‘I can’t believe that we’re crying that she won’t be able to play the piano. Like, there’s no-one in our family that can play any musical instrument.’ So, I don’t know why it had become so important at that time that … it was like somebody giving me a glimmer of hope that she wasn’t going to lose all her fingers and then, the next day you’re told ‘Oh, actually she won’t be able to play the piano anymore’ that she could never play to begin with.

Yeah. I thought my life was over, 100%. Because again, it was like, because I had a couple of, like, avenues that I could go down, do you know? Just to say for an instance, I didn’t make it as a professional footballer because, again, this was a question that my head of year asked me before I left school, he said to me, because at end of year we have like, we had an interview with our head of year to see if he could sort out apprenticeships and things like that for us, so I can remember going in and he said “You alright Gary? So, what is it you want to do when you leave school?” I said “Oh, I’m going to be a footballer sir.” He said “Oh, I’m loving that you’ve got that kind of confidence but it’s very hard to become a professional footballer.” I says “Yeah, I know sir, but I want to become a professional footballer” and he said, “Oh come on Gary, what else do you like?” I said “Well, I don’t mind like a, I wouldn’t mind to become an electrician.” And he went “Right, ok, I’ll write off to an electrical company and see if they’ll take you on as an apprentice.” I went “Alright, no worries, sir but I am becoming a professional footballer.”

And then, like, so we had a little laugh and that about that and then I left and, like, obviously, it was only a couple of weeks after I left school that I had the accident and it was like, whilst I was actually in the hospital, my mum come in and she had the letter from the electrical company saying that they were happy to take me on. But again, because I’d lost my index finger because I weren’t sure if my eyesight was going to be as good as it used to be, and I’d lost my leg and so I just thought it’s like every avenue that I thought “Maybe I could go down that” it’s like it was just taken away from me and that was really hard to deal with.

Chris: One of the things that you asked William earlier – does this affect him and what his outlook is – you know, one of the things he didn’t mention was what happens when he does decide he’s into girls, or into boys, it doesn’t matter. You know, how is that going to affect his appearance? Is he going to be bothered by it then? It’s not come up now because he’s not interested. But he’s 15, he’s not got to that point in life but, you know, it will come. Is that going to be another set of conversations we need to have with the hospital? Is that conversations we need to have with William? It’s certainly conversations he’s going to have with whatever, whatever prospective partner he’s going to have.

Is this a concern that you have, as his parents?

Amy: Yeah, I think, that he might suddenly-

Chris: Become, he might suddenly become very conscious of it. At the moment, it’s not an issue but he might suddenly become really conscious of it and actually, you know, it then affects his outlook on life or affects how he goes about-

Amy: He likes swimming, so I wouldn’t, we wouldn’t want it to put him off swimming because of what other people might think.

Once I’ve come out of hospital and that I wanted to give something back to the fire service, so when I was actually on a Princes Trust course that was being run by two firemen and we got talking and that and I was telling them how I want to give something back to the fire service and they said ‘Well, there is a voluntary arm of the fire service, it’s called the Community Action Team, would you like me to arrange an interview for you?’ So, I said ‘Oh yeah, we’d love that.’ Anyway, I went for the interview, like got taken on and all that and then, within three months of volunteering for the Community Action Team I got nominated and won The Most Valued Member of the Fire Service.

So, but again, it was like when I joined the fire service and just being in the environment with the-, it was just because of the affiliation that I had, especially with the fire station that it was, because it was the fire station that pulled me from the car, so it felt like ‘I’m home.’ Do you know what I mean? This is where I needed to be kind of thing. And from just the confidence that being around people that was always like ‘Oh, aren’t you doing well?’ or just always bigging me up kind of thing, that really raised my confidence and, yeah.