Louise

Age at interview: 31

Brief Outline: Louise was at a music festival in Spain when it appears she may have fallen from a pylon. She broke bones, sustained a brain injury and thirty-five percent of her body was burned. She does not remember her injury happening.

Background: Louise is a photographer. She is single and lives with flatmates. Ethnic background' Middle Eastern/English.

More about me...

Louise cannot remember her injury. She remembers dancing at the music festival and then waking up in hospital in Spain. It seems she fell from a pylon, after being electrocuted. She sustained severe burns to thirty-five percent of her body and forty-five to fifty percent is scarred due to burns and scarring from donor tissue being removed. She also broke numerous bones in her body, including her back. She wore a back brace in hospital and had a pin put into her leg. Her mobility and balance remain problematic for her. She has difficulty carrying things whilst using stairs and also does not like to be in crowded areas. She sustained a brain injury, which affected her memory, concentration and her organisational skills, especially in the six months immediately post-injury. Apart from her burns, all Louise’s injuries were left to heal naturally. 

 

Initially, Louise was given morphine to manage the “extreme pain” from her burns, but she was weaned off this to ensure her skin did not become hypersensitive. Louise explained, “If your skin doesn’t start to experience pressure and sensation, the nerves won’t recover”. Her bandages were changed every few days and were treated with creams, including iodine cream and an antibacterial cream. In hospital staff changed the dressings. When she was discharged her parents took over, but she chose to change certain bandages because it was like “pulling off a plaster – sometimes you’d rather do it yourself”. Louise attends day surgery every couple of months to get steroid injections into her scars. This helps with the terrible itching she experienced as her skin began to heal.

 

She received physiotherapy to help her walk again and progressed from a wheelchair to a zimmer frame to a stick over two months. She is still working with a physiotherapist to improve her balance and ability to walk whilst carrying things. An occupational therapist helped her to make her home more accessible by suggesting where to install handrails. 

 

Louise “forced” herself to overcome the negative feelings she had about her body after her injury by swimming and going on beach holidays. She advises others to confront their fears' “If you continually do things in the dark, you’ll never get through it”. Her injury changed her life. Life is “about living between now and the next few months. Everything can change, so I don’t see the point in dwelling on anything too far ahead”.

 

Louise, an artist, is doing a photography project to try to help her remember what happened. She...

People that have lost memory or been displaced from certain events in their life, they become more inclined to photograph things more fervently because, because of the loss of time, and the loss of something you continue to record. So that could be something to do with it.

 

And how do you think not knowing has impacted on your life?

 

Well I’ve been doing this project full time, which has just been photographing my body in all these strange places. A lot of the positions I do, I look like I’ve fallen. So, I’m kind of like on the ground in like fallen positions, so maybe it’s like I’m trying to see what happened through pictures.

 

Does it bother you that you can’t remember what happened?

 

Slightly yes, yes, it does.

 

And why is that do you think?

 

Because the nature of the accident was so bizarre, I would be curious to know how that could have happened. How I could have climbed up? I don’t do climbing or anything. If you’ve had a few drinks you’re not likely to climb anything strange. I’m not.

 

It must be hard to think about something so significant happening and you not remembering what led up to it or the actual process.

 

I kind of think things happen for a reason. This is why I’m going to go back there to see if I remember anything, but I mean it’s possibly something that I did. Maybe I climbed that? And then if one were to climb something like that then one has a death wish, which I don’t believe I’ve ever had, but I have, in terms of performance wise, you know. I have used performance in my work and stuff, but I’ve never done anything to a dangerous level. It could have been an accident. It’s a strange one.  

Louise thinks she can be reassessed any time. Her first application for DLA was unsuccessful, but...

And did you have any assessments or anything like that?

 

Yeah, I had an assessment which I failed. I think they fail everyone. I don’t think it really matters like how disabled you are or whatever; they just don’t want to give anyone benefits. But you appeal and while you appeal you still get benefits and then they do the reassessment and then once they do the reassessment they agreed straight away that I should have been getting benefits.

 

And what was the reason for failing you?

 

I was only like three marks off what I needed. They ticked that I had full mobility in my legs and knees, which I clearly didn’t have, and I still don’t now, so …

 

Yes, and so do you still get that benefit now, the DLA?

 

Yes.

 

And do they re-assess you from time-to-time?

 

Yes.

 

And how often does that happen?

 

I think whenever they want to. I think so. I don’t know. I mean it’s the first time I’ve been on it.

 

Right. So you haven’t yet been assessed or you haven’t yet been reassessed until you started to receive payment from them?

 

I’ve had two. I failed the first one and then they did it again. And then I’m probably due another one.

 

How does that feel for you? That you are going to be constantly reassessed on this benefit.

 

Oh I don’t really mind. I mean they have to do these sorts of things. Don’t they? It’s just that, I don’t know, I feel bad for people that are having a lot of trouble with it because you have to really like, I don’t know, it’s difficult. I don’t think the system is very good, but there’s obviously a lack of funds so they have to really be tight about it. But it doesn’t seem to be that fair. I mean I was failed on things I clearly couldn’t do like bending my knees and stuff. I couldn’t get down, couldn’t crouch down, couldn’t bend down.

 

And in the assessment what did it actually involve?

 

Not a lot really. I mean they sort of ask you to pick a few things up. Sit down. Talk about this, that, show them my burns, show them some paperwork. Yeah, they ask for you to do very simple things. 

Louise doesn't talk to her friends about her experience of injury because she knows how much it...

I’ve got a lot of friends and a lot of friends have been there for me. But I think my experience with friends is I can really only talk about myself, as in I don’t think I could share stuff with them so easily. Not because of the type of friends I have or how they were. I just think that it was difficult for me to share stuff with friends.

 

Why do you think that was?

 

I don’t know. I think it’s just the extreme nature of what it was. I think underneath that they’ve suffered a lot anyway because everyone was telling me how much this whole thing affected them. So, I didn’t want to make it any worse for my friends or my family. But I don’t think I’m able to talk about the finer details. I mean part of me is just like, what’s the point? I don’t know, I think maybe unconsciously it’s just I feel they’ve got no relationship to it. I don’t know, that might be part of it. Just that they’ve got no real concept of that. It’s just something I don’t share.

 

Louise pushed herself to come to terms with her scars after she was burned. She compensates for...

Could you tell me a little bit about how your injury has affected your body image?

 

Well it’s a difficult one because, you see, I was working with body image and identity before my accident as well. I actually think I wasn’t particularly happy with my body before the accident and my body was pretty perfect before. And this is why the project I think is interesting to everyone at every level because almost the more perfect and beautiful we are, the more issue we can have with obtaining perfection. I think I personally try and compensate a lot for the scars in terms of fitness, diet, clothing. I mean always have been quite creative in that aspect, but I think in terms of fitness and diet and stuff, I just feel that I really want to look good, and that is over-compensating. I just feel that, I guess the scarring is quite obvious in a sense. Even though I know you can’t see it and obviously I’ve got a boyfriend. And I go swimming. I went to St Tropez in the summer. I did a project in the South of France and it was hot, and I did want to go the beach, and I did want to swim and you push yourself through all these challenges, and it’s hard. It takes time, but it’s getting there. It’s okay, but yeah, I think I probably do over-compensate to a degree in other areas to make myself feel okay. Everyone’s got their little mechanisms of doing things. I think if you raise your confidence in other areas maybe work is one, relationships. Once those other areas raise up it kind of balances it out a little bit.

 

I went through all of that in the summer because I did two beach holidays. I mean when you come out the water I’d put trousers on because I’m not supposed to be in the sun at all really. So, people would have seen me momentarily and then, more recently I’ve been swimming quite a lot. It bothered me a lot in the beginning yeah, but once you push through that.

 

How did you overcome that? How did you push through it?

 

Just went to the beach and just forced myself to do it. But in the south of France all those perfect bodies – it wasn’t, maybe it wasn’t the right thing, but I didn’t think about that before I rocked up there, but it was too late when I was there. So, what you realise is nobody’s interested in what you look like. No one gives a monkey’s what you look like.

 

Louise can't open up fully to her new partner, but is trying. She has pushed herself to become...

Quite early on did you let him know the full extent of your scars?

 

Yeah, definitely. I’m quite an open person anyway, and with my experience so far, the quicker you delve into the problem, the easier it is to get out of it. So if you’re feeling self conscious and not wanting to talk about things if you turn that around as soon as possible, then things will become much easier. But I have to say he’s always wanted me to open up about it, and I have to say I haven’t really opened up to him about it yet.

 

Why is that?

 

I don’t know. I think it’s one reason why I said I wanted to go back and do counselling because I’ve not spoken about what happened in hospital.

 

I think it’s difficult. I’ve pushed myself through a lot of barriers. I don’t think everyone’s quite that willing to do that. So I’m not, what’s easy for me is not easy for the next person. And you have to think about their situation. I mean only do what’s comfortable, but the more open you’re able to be verbally with people and the more you’re able to talk about what you went through, the better you’re going to feel. And the more you’ll understand yourself. If you don’t share those finer details everything’s going to be so slowed down. They’ll be sticking points unless you can open up about it. 

 

Sharing her feelings with other people who had experienced burn injuries at the Changing Faces...

Is there anything that you want to say to health professionals, doctors, nurses, physios, OT’s, anybody sort of that you’ve come across in your care and treatment?

 

I think that they need to look at the social side of it really. I think that the isolation that people experience for whatever reason after the accident is one of the biggest hindrances. And that state, that emotional state of mind can prevent a lot of things from happening and it’s really, really difficult, I think, for people that open up and share their experience. One thing that helped me was that I’ve been to some burns groups. I think I’ve been to one at Changing Faces and that really helped me, I think. When you’re with somebody that’s shared a similar experience, you can open up on a different level and it brings great relief, so they need to encourage people to do that. Yeah.

 

Through her art work Louise has been helping other people with burns injuries to feel comfortable...

Okay and does the project aim to satisfy sort of personal needs? Or is it for something different to that really?

 

It started off purely personal need, for me, about myself, just purely sort of aesthetic and therapeutic. But once I started to show the work, I realised the impact it was having on other people. Not just sort of aesthetic, but like emotional impact. The relationships people have with their bodies and the way people consider their body image, I think anyone can relate to that. But then once I started to get press from it. I was getting a lot of emails from burns survivors and so forth saying how liberated they felt to see the images, and how they felt it was a voice for them, because the main thing is everything’s internalised and there just doesn’t seem to be any way of getting out of that isolated space. Very difficult to share your experiences, and somehow people felt, some people felt more inclined to show their scars and felt more proud of their bodies as well as a result. So I think that spurred me on to bring the work more into a public field and keep going, because people were encouraging me to keep going. They really liked it, so, yeah, that really accelerated one part of it, and then I realised that the stuff that I’m going through is making a difference to other people and I’m still working stuff out and I’d like to work maybe with some other people, other burns survivors and see if surely that process of just looking and seeing that can make you feel more comfortable with what’s actually there. I think it is actually a tangible process.

 

How does it make you feel to know that other people benefit from your art?

 

Yeah. That’s been really great. I mean I had emails from all round the world; there are two or three particular things spring to mind. One was from South Africa, these two girls, they were from an organisation called Children of Fire like with all these like young people that experienced burns and a lot of them were orphans and to have reached that. You know, with the internet things go that farther afield. And those girls said to me, “Part of recovering is like possibly finding out what happened to me.” So I’ve got advice from people and it’s kind of like a shared thing, which is really, really nice.