Mercy

Age at interview: 55

Brief Outline:

Mercy was in her 20’s when she was burnt. Initially, she received treatment in another country before moving to the U.K. for more specialist treatment. Mercy believes it is important for family members of people with burns to be supported as well as the person themselves.

Background:

Mercy is 55 years old. Her ethnicity is Black African.

More about me...

Mercy was in her 20’s when she was burnt. At the time of her burn, she was living in another country where some treatments were not available to her. Three years after she was burnt, Mercy met with a doctor from the U.K. who was concerned that she was not receiving the correct treatment or had access to the right equipment. He invited her to travel to the U.K. for treatment.

Over the years Mercy has had over 20 skin graft operations to help with movement and mobility. Mercy’s scars healed with contractures which caused her pain and discomfort in her neck and hand. She said that sometimes, the site that the skin is taken from for the skin graft is more painful than the site of the graft itself. Over time, Mercy realised that due to her dark skin, she is more prone keloid scarring than people with white skin. This has caused some problems with scarring and has required laser treatment which has “flattened” the skin on Mercy’s face more. Mercy recently received laser treatment to “flatten” her keloid scarring, but unfortunately this did not achieve the outcome Mercy expected. She said this could be because “the older the burn, the harder it is to get the skin to flatten”.

Mercy has found several ways of coping with having a burn injury. Support groups are important to her because she is able to meet and speak to other people who have burns. It is also important to Mercy that her family are able to access support as she believes her burn injury affects them, too, as sometimes they struggle to understand what she had been through.

Journaling has also been a way which mercy has learnt to process her emotions. When her anxiety was high or if she was feeling distressed, Mercy would write in her journal about how she was feeling. By doing this, Mercy is able to go back and read how she was feeling at certain points in her life and how she dealt with those feelings, should they arise again. Mercy recommends journaling to others as a way of coping with difficult emotions.

With time, Mercy has been able to accept that her burns make her the person she is today. Having a burn injury has “made me very resilient”, Mercy believes.

Mercy would sometimes pretend to be asleep to delay having her dressings changed.

Just thinking about it, it just makes you feel like they are going to do the thing again. That, I would say was very, very uncomfortable because I remember when I knew the nurses were coming to do my dressing, I would sometimes like pretend I’m asleep so that they don’t have to do it. And then, they would come and come back again and I’m still asleep and I think they realised kind of I’m avoiding it because I didn’t have any other way. Really, really painful and at the same time, they used to bring a, they used to call it a whirlpool bath, when it’s like they put some medication in the water and then you are put in there to wash off the wound. So, it was really, really painful, traumatic and it’s something you don’t want to remember.

Mercy wanted to set a “good example” about body confidence to her daughter.

And one of the things that I did was go to the beach and get my costume on and got into the sea. Because I feel that I also have to set a good example to my daughter because she’s somebody who is very conscious of herself, you know. I think when girls are growing up they are conscious of their body, and because I was with her at that time, I was like ‘I’m going to do this for me and I’m going to do it for her’ and to conquer that fear as well. And I did exactly that, I put on my costume, and I walked to the sea and stayed there in the water and then came out and I didn’t cover myself and I didn’t get bothered about … I know people … I could see people are staring at me, but I carried on doing what I was doing, and nobody questioned me.

Mercy used journaling as a way to cope with difficult feelings and situations.

I taught myself to write those journals and something like that, pardon me. And sometimes when I notice that my anxiety’s going high or I’m feeling funny, I reach out to them, and they write how I’m feeling. And then I try to ask myself “Why am I feeling this way now?” So, I also write this down, so like, I was talking about this week because I’ve noticed that my anxiety is going high and I’ve really tried to sleep and I think yes, this burn anniversary coming up is causing me to have anxiety. Like, last night, I was struggling to sleep, just last night. And I had to wake up, get myself a drink, and then, just a book and try reading and finally I fell asleep.

And would you recommend writing a journal to other people with burn injuries?

Yes, I think for me it kind of helps because sometimes I can go back and look at the period when I was having a really, really difficult time or say, for example, I’ve gone out-, because you’ve got to think, like when you are a burn survivor, sometimes your day can be spoiled by something very, very minor. You can be out, and somebody will comment on something about you and you’re like “Oh my goodness, where did that come from?”. But I’ve learnt over the years that don’t take things like that personally, because you are only hurting yourself because that person, you don’t know where they were coming from – either they were being nasty or they were being kind in a way that they only know how, so I’ve learnt like to write things like that down – say I was out, somebody said this or somebody was really staring at me and stuff, and then what did I do about it. But when I write things like that down, and then something like that happens again, I can sometimes go back to what I wrote and I’m like “Oh, what did I do about it? So, I’m going to do the same thing about this”. So, what I’m trying to say is like that writing it helps me, personally it helps me, and I would recommend it.

With time, Mercy came to accept that her burns make her who she is, and she is more resilient because of them.

In terms of your experience of having a burn injury, do you think that your experience has changed over time? Has who you are as a person changed over time because of the burn?

Oh definitely, definitely, yeah. Because you are dealing with so many emotions at the same time, and sometimes it can totally alter who you are. So, I think for me, definitely I have changed, I have gone through every kind of anger, every kind of frustration, depression, all of them, I’ve gone through all of those right? And so, I think they have changed me as a person and who I used to be before. But with time, because obviously my burn injuries they are longer in terms of how long I’ve had them, I have attended so many like, maybe workshops, or reached out to different people, met so many other burn’s survivors, I have now come to realise that, you know, some of these things, like feeling angry because ‘oh now I look different, people look’, some people actually, you know, because sometimes you can meet people who are not nice to you in terms of the physical appearance, they will sometimes stare at you, they will sometimes say bad things to you.

But with time, I think I’ve come to accept that this is who I am now. And in a way actually sometimes, I look at it like when I attract attention to people, I have ways now to cope with this in terms of instead of being angry, I actually tell them my story, if there is time. Or, I just say something nice to them and in turn they actually listen to you, and they end up being nice to you, even though they probably are being in a not a very nice way. Yeah, so in general, I would say it changes you and, I think for me it has made me very resilient.

Mercy said that events that include family members of those with burns are important because they can sometimes struggle too. She had attended some run by a US charity, The Phoenix Society for Burn Survivors.

Yes, and that’s another that is really, really helpful because like they even organise trips for burns survivors to meet and I was lucky enough to go, like all the years I have known about them, like all those years I was never able to attend any just because of financially, because you have to finance yourself, and I was lucky enough in 2019, I was able to attend one in California.

The other good thing I found about them is that they support family as well. Because I think what people don’t realise is like when you have, say something like a burn injury, it does affect the people who are next to you like your family, because sometimes they struggle because they don’t know how to handle you. They don’t know what you are going through, they don’t know what to say and so it’s always difficult for them and say for me, I know for sure my daughter has suffered that and was very good because she attended and attended the family help thing, it was very beneficial to her.