Claire
When Claire was 3 years old, she sustained burns to the right side of her body after a jug of hot cooking fat was accidentally poured over her. She spent 10 weeks at a specialist burns hospital where she received skin grafts. Claire believes her scars have shaped her into the person she is today.
Claire is 44 years old and lives with her husband and their two children aged 10 and 12. Claire is a market researcher. Her ethnicity is White British.
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Claire was 3 years old when she was pretending to cook in the kitchen alongside her mother. Claire reached up onto a worktop and grabbed a metal jug containing hot cooking fat. The cooking fat accidentally poured onto Claire and she sustained burns to the right side of her body. As Claire was so young when the accident happened, she doesn’t remember a lot about what happened and much of what she knows is what her family have told her.
Immediately after sustaining the burn, Claire’s Mum called an ambulance and Claire was taken to a specialist burns hospital 2 hours away from the family home where she stayed for 10 weeks. Claire thinks this would have been a ‘nightmare’ for her family as her mother had to travel back and forth each day whilst her younger sister was with a childminder and her father was working away.
Claire says she can only remember “random memories” from her time in hospital. During her hospital stay, Claire had several skin grafts where skin was taken from her legs and bottom and grafted over the burnt areas of skin. She remembers this as being the “worst bit” of her hospital stay as it resulted in “more sore bits” of skin.
When Claire was discharged from hospital she had to wear pressure garments which were designed to provide pressure over her healing burns and grafts. Claire does not remember having any issues when wearing the pressure garments, other than she would feel hot wearing it during the summer months. She remembers having her measurements taken regularly for new pressure garments as she grew.
Claire has never accessed any psychological support relating to the burn injury, she says this is because her burn has never been something that has “bugged her”. In hindsight, however, Claire thinks it would have been helpful as a teenager to speak to someone as there is “enough to deal with” being a teenager, and this was made more difficult for her having a burn injury.
As time has passed Claire has found it easier to cope with having a burn injury, she said that she realised that “everyone’s got hang-ups about their body”. She finds it helpful to put herself in “uncomfortable situations”, such as wearing a bikini on the beach, because “what’s the worst that can happen?”
Claire wants healthcare professionals when speaking to patients who have burn injuries to be sensitive, positive, and encouraging, especially during the teenage years. She says that healthcare professionals should have “empathy and understanding to what a person is going through”. Claire’s advice for someone who has had a burn injury is to consider the challenges that you have already come through, and to acknowledge that it has made you more resilient, stronger, and braver.
Claire was 3 years old when she reached for a pan filled with hot oil and accidentally spilled it over herself.
Claire was 3 years old when she reached for a pan filled with hot oil and accidentally spilled it over herself.
I was trying to play like cooking in the kitchen. So, my mum was around and cooking at the same time, and I reached up to get this, it was a metal jug. So, the handle must have been kind of towards me, but she'd cooked chips, I think it was.
So, I reached up and grabbed it and it and it went all over me. So, it somehow missed my face. I think I might have a tiny little, some sort of bit here under my chin, but the worst bit is kind of my shoulder. There's a really bad scar there and under my arm, but basically all down the right side. It was, it's down my arm. It's gone to like my wrist and my side, and mainly the top of my right thigh. So, it's kind of all down that right side, and yeah, so I don't think my mum knew what to do.
Claire wore a pressure garment for a year after she was burnt.
Claire wore a pressure garment for a year after she was burnt.
To be honest I can't remember how long I wore them for, probably a year maybe, or maybe it would have been longer, the pressure garments. Because I kind of had a little jacket which had a long sleeve for this arm and a short sleeve for that one. Yeah, I think, nothing on the bottom, so it was just like a little bodice jacket thing with a zip, but it was pretty tight because it was supposed to be, you know, flattening out the scars. And it was hot in the summer.
Just wearing this pressure garment was the main thing. And then we would go back in for check-ups, and I guess to... I don't really remember check-ups, I remember going into this room that was kind of like where they made these garments. It was like a big, loads of sewing machines. It was kind of like the specialist bit of the hospital where they did that, and I guess I would have had to have new ones regularly because I was growing. I guess that was that what that was for, but I don't even know how long I wore it.
Claire said she worried about her boyfriend at the time seeing her scars when she was a teenager.
Claire said she worried about her boyfriend at the time seeing her scars when she was a teenager.
It's kind of that age, and I felt the stress from my mum as well of like when you're going to have that. And then there was this boyfriend, of course, so I met, I actually met him on the beach. But I did go through a phase of trying to keep it pretty covered up, so I would never wear anything sleeveless to show like this bit. And I think even this point, I was wearing leggings on the beach. I think I might have like rolled up the leggings going to sea. And he saw like the tiniest bit on my leg, like there's hardly anything at the bottom of my leg, and said “Oh, what's that?” We weren't together at this point. And so, I think that was a bit of a like “Oh God”, you know. But then, yeah, I don't know how I then revealed the scars to him. I don't remember like a big reveal kind of point, but we were together for four years. And so, it was fine. It's just those initial getting to know people, telling them you've got scars. And I think actually I might have gone out with a boy before that, again about 17, and my mum's saying, “Well are you going to tell him about the scars?” So, she obviously felt funny about it, but that really annoyed me. I just like, “Just shut up”, like, you know, I’ll do what I want. So, I think it was winter, so he might not have seen.
Like teenage years when you're going through puberty, and, you know, understanding how that individual might be feeling the pressures because life's even, it's more different now than when I was growing up.