William
William was 13 years old when he sustained burns to his legs and feet when he accidentally spilled a pan of boiling water over himself. William was interviewed with his parents Amy and Chris Y (Link to profile).
William is 15 years old and is a secondary school student. He lives at home with his siblings and parents. His ethnicity is White British.
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William was cooking pasta at home and accidentally knocked the pan of boiling water off the kitchen worktop, and it spilled onto his legs and feet. He sustained burns to 8% of his body. William doesn’t remember much about what happened immediately after the accident.
William’s Dad was at home at the time of the accident and he applied cool, running water to William’s burns. An ambulance was called and William was taken to the A&E unit of a local hospital. Paramedics administered morphine on the way to the hospital. Most of what William is aware of from this point he has been told by his parents as the morphine heavily sedated him.
Once he arrived at the hospital, it was decided that William would be transferred to a specialist burns unit. William said the doctors and nurses spoke to him using simple terms and this was beneficial as it helped him to clearly understand what was going on.
Whilst at the burns hospital, William had to have his dressings changed several times. He said dressing changes were less painful whilst he was in the bath, as the bandages would come off more easily. William found that distractions, such as watching television, were helpful in taking his mind off the pain whilst his dressings were changed. William stayed at the specialist burns hospital for four days before he was discharged back home.
As he recovered, William would moisturise his scars to help with healing and to stop them feeling ‘dry’. He also found the appearance of his scars were ‘flatter’ as he wore tight running trousers, similar to pressure garments, for the majority of the day.
At the time of his burn, William did not know anybody else who had sustained a burn injury. In hindsight, he thinks it would have been helpful to speak to someone else who had shared a similar experience and encountered similar struggles.
William was interviewed with his parents Amy and Chris Y (Link to profile).
Nurses suggested that William could wear “stretchy trousers” instead of compression bandages. William found the trousers to be comfortable to wear.
Nurses suggested that William could wear “stretchy trousers” instead of compression bandages. William found the trousers to be comfortable to wear.
Dad: But the stretchy trousers were a kind of suggestion from one of the nurses, it’s like ‘Well, try these before we go down the compression bandage route because, actually they’re all bespoke, they all take time to make, so not particularly comfortable, whereas the stretchy trousers we’ve had success with. Try them, see what happens. If it doesn’t work, we’ll still go down that option but, you know, for your benefit try them, because you can have a dozen pairs of stretchy trousers from whichever running shop in question, you can wash them every day. Whereas your bespoke bandages you’re getting one and … and when it breaks, we get you another one.’
William: It’s like, so the first pair of…
Dad: Running trousers, weren’t they?
William: Yeah, running trousers, they had a pocket in the back of them, which wasn’t very comfortable because the zip kept on digging into me. So, basically my mum bought some which didn’t have pockets in and they were much more comfortable.
William: You’re supposed to wear them 23 hours a day. And they were actually really impressed because I wore them 23.5 hours a day, just that short amount of time, to actually shower and get changed. The rest of the time I was wearing them.
So, you were happy to wear them a lot?
Yeah, they’re comfortable.
William said the doctors spoke to him like he was a “grown-up”.
William said the doctors spoke to him like he was a “grown-up”.
Yeah, at some points they did speak to me like I was a grown-up, but in other points no, they spoke to me like a child. So, when I had just come in, they were speaking... well, what, from what I could actually hear, they were speaking to me like I, in very, very simple words that I knew what was going on but didn’t have to actually do any brain processing power to actually know what was going on. Whilst later on, they did use more complicated words but, but yeah.