Sabrina
Sabrina was 11 years old when she sustained her burn injury. Sabrina was on holiday with her family when an electric fault caused a fire in their flat. She sustained burns to her face and hands. Sabrina says that her scars are healed and don’t affect her but she is still wary about leaving electricals on overnight.
Sabrina is a 27-year-old PhD student. She lives with her partner. Her ethnicity is White British.
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Sabrina was 11 years old when she was on holiday with her family in Spain. They were staying in a self-catering apartment during the winter months and were using heaters to keep warm. An electrical fault occurred in the middle of the night causing a plug socket to catch fire in the lounge of their flat. Sabrina and her family managed to escape but came very close to the flames which is how they sustained their burns. They ran to a bar at the end of the street where an ambulance was called and they were taken to hospital.
At the hospital she remembers being put under general anaesthetic whilst her burns were cleaned. When she woke up, she felt distressed because she could not open her eyes as they were so swollen because of the fire, and she did not know what had happened to her parents. Sabrina found it challenging at the hospital because the staff did not speak any English and she could not speak Spanish. She recalls meeting a parent of another child who was able to translate what the doctors were saying to her, she said this was a relief as she now had answers about what was happening.
Sabrina received treatment in hospital in Spain for two weeks before she was transferred to a U.K. hospital where she stayed for a further two weeks. She says the support and care she received in Spain was better because the hospital was not as busy as the one in the U.K.
After being discharged from the U.K. hospital, Sabrina returned home with her Mum and was ready to return to school. Sabrina attended physiotherapy appointments where she had to do hand exercises. She said this was a very painful experience and because she was young, she didn’t understand why she needed to do it. Sabrina does not remember being offered any psychological support to cope with a burn injury. Although at the time she felt like she didn’t need it, she wishes they had explained to her how a burn injury may affect you in the future.
Sabrina was told about a charity that offered burn specific support to children and young people. However, she did not access the support because she felt it was for children with more severe burns than her. In hindsight, she thinks it would have been beneficial to meet other children with burn injuries and talk about their shared experiences.
For around five years after the burn, Sabrina had to avoid direct sunlight whilst her skin healed. This was a sad experience for her as her family lived outside of the U.K. so she could not visit them. When her skin had healed and she was able to travel again, she said the relationship with her family had been impacted because she had not seen them for so long.
Since sustaining her burn, Sabrina experienced flashbacks at night where she would relive the event. She said this was made worse if she felt stressed or anxious. Sabrina also experienced times where she would smell the scent of a fire burning. It is only within the last three years that she has stopped experiencing the flashbacks and smell of burning.
Sabrina’s advice for other people who have a burn injury is “to look for sources of support and people to talk to”. She also thinks it is important for health professionals to tell patients how their burn may affect them in the future and to signpost them to sources of support that can help.
Sabrina was burnt when the holiday apartment she was staying in had an electrical fault and caught fire.
Sabrina was burnt when the holiday apartment she was staying in had an electrical fault and caught fire.
So, I was on holiday with my family with my parents, and we're staying in a little self-catering flat, and it was over winter. So, it was quite a cold flat. So, the, we had a heat... we had heaters to keep us warm, but the electrics were really faulty. So, in the middle of the night, one of the sockets caught alight in the lounge, which was our exit out of the building. And so there was... we spent quite a while in the flat close to the fire. Not, didn't go through it at any point but close to it, and the heat caused a lot of burn injuries to me and my family before we managed to get out of the flat.
Sabrina told us that every person she interacted with offered her sympathy.
Sabrina told us that every person she interacted with offered her sympathy.
I had a lot of sympathy from every hospital person that I was in contact with, and I think they tried to make me smile and laugh more than they would someone older. So, I felt very supported by all of the nurses and the anaesthetist, everyone that I was, like, in contact with. Obviously, in the first hospital, I couldn't speak to them, so that was difficult. But I think it didn't seem so bad because everything was happening in such a whirlwind.
They just did everything they could to be helpful. They were really lovely, and they sort of, like, joke around like when I was obviously struggling with my eyes open, the nurse that would come in and try and open them up would be sort of like spent a lot of time like trying to guess my eye colour and things like that, I guess to distract me. And they helped to coordinate like getting our things out of the flat, and they allowed me to have my teddy, which I was very excited about. So, I was quite a chuffed little child as soon as I had my teddy back. So just things like that. They just, yeah, did what they could to help.