Burn Victim

Being burned is sometimes hard to handle. Most people will never fully understand what I and other burn victims have gone through. They will never know how we struggle on a daily bases to survive some of the simplest of things. For me and others heat is the worse on me. Also there is the limited flexibility and movement. But no matter what the problem is I have always tried to face it with a positive attitude.
If you're a parent of a young child or the spouse or friend of a burn victim remember they may have scares but they are no different then you. If you are a victim of severer burns and struggling to fit into a world that doesn't understand what you're going through, you're not alone. Please allow me to share with you my story and give you some facts and bits of information.

I was born on April 27, 1965 to very young parents. Neither of them had better then a Tenth grade education. Dad went off to Vietnam and mom was left with raising me. Mom was from an abusive home with alcoholic parents. There are a lot of details about this time in my life that are sketchy and stories differ from one person to the next. All that is for certain is that at some point in time I was put up for adoption.
I was adopted by Lee and Ellen. They were an older couple with two young adult children; Rhea, my sister was around 19 or 20, Michael was 18 or 19. I was born Danny Lee, but after being adopted my name was changed to Jeffery Daniel. Growing up I was always called Danny. To this day I may not remember a person's name, but if they call me Danny I know that I had met them before I started working. After I started working to keep things straight with for work records, I started using Jeff. Anyone who calls me Jeff is likely someone I have met within the last 20 plus years.
From this point on when referring to mom or dad, I will be speaking of the parents that adopted me. Mom was a former nurse, who had to retire after a car accident that left her in a body cast for three years. That accident required a steal rod to be implanted in her right leg to allow her to be able to walk again. Dad was also in that car accident and sustained multiple broken bones and almost losing an ear. Dad was working in Heating and Air conditioning at the time. In later years he would work in sheet metal until he retired in 1987.
Mom and dad were foster parents for many children over some 20 plus year period. Some of these children came for a few days, others came for a month, yet others might be there for much longer. Mom and dad truly enjoyed and looked forward to sharing their lives with these children. Once these children arrived they were treated like family, in some cases this would be the first time in these children's lives they had something close to a family unit. Some would come back years later and meet with Mom and Dad and share how being with them changed or touched their lives. Every child that came through the door left a little better then they were when they arrived.
Over the years mom and dad had taken in a number of children due to emergency placement needs, through the Department of Children and Family Service. Around mid-December mom received a phone call about one such child. I don't know the boys name, (for the sake of the story I'll call him Tom). He was 8 years old, (I was 4 at this time). Tom had gone through a lot of problems in his short life time. Tom has been beaten as by his real parents as well as sexually abused by the foster father he was placed with. Mom quickly agreed to take Tom in for a week, until other arrangements could be found for him. Though he was suppose to be there for only a week, he would stay with us until after the New Year.
On January 17th, 1970, Tom and I woke shortly after dad had left for work. Mom was still in bed and had no clue we were already up. Tom and I some how found are way out to the garage and started playing. First it was innocent child's play. Before long he found some lighters and lighter fluid. Dad kept his lighters and flammables up on a shelf well out of our reach, that didn't keep us from getting to them. Tom found a step stool and crawled onto the work bench. After retrieving the lighter fluid and lighter, I recall Tom putting some lighter fluid into a small can and lighting it. Pop! Whoosh! That was so cool. We continued trying new things and ways to make things go pop or whoosh. It wasn't long before Tom spotted the red colored can up on the shelf. He tried lifting it, but thankfully it was full. He then reached for a smaller tin can with some paint brushes in it. This also contained some gasoline. Tom poured the contents of the can on the garage floor and lit it. The flames flared up, caught my pants leg and very quickly worked its way up. I took off running into the house screaming, crying, and yelling for mom. I remember stopping a few times as I was running, leaving burned out patches on rugs and carpets. Tom tried franticly to help put out the fire on my pajamas. But it had spread too far and to fast. Panicked and frightened I ran toward mom's bedroom. Mom came out of her bedroom, saw the flames, turned around grabbing a blanket and quickly wrapped it around me. Once she was sure the flames were out on me, and had Tom and me calmed down enough, she called the hospital (911 had not been established in our area yet). After what seemed to be an hour the police and fire department arrived, followed closely by the ambulance. The fire department made sure the fire was out and started me on an IV. The police took a report about what had happened. Mom cradled me, comforting me as best she could, knowing that I was liking in shock and very critical. She did the best she could to comfort Tom as well.
I don't know what happened directly after that. My next memory comes after arriving at the Hospital. I was laying on the gurney; nurses and doctor were looking over me, carefully removing burned pajamas and skin. The IV was replaced with a new bag and I was given a something to help me relax. One nurse kept talking to me. She asked me my name and age. She told me not to move, that everything was going to be ok. They did all they could to help me until they could transport me to another hospital. This hospital didn't have a burn unit, so arrangements were to transport me to University Hospital in Iowa City.
Arriving at the Hospital in Iowa City and what followed is all a blur. It would be like that for the next few months. I was rushed in for skin graph surgery over and over again, many times one surgery after another. The doctors were able to use skin from my head, right leg and left arm for some of the graphs needed. But with the amount of operations I was having and the large amount of areas needing graphs, my body was not able to provide enough good skin; they had to take skin from others. Most of the skin came from people who had died.
It was decided that mom would stay in Iowa City during the whole time I was there. Dad would return home and continue working. They found a motel just across from the hospital. The owner and my parents quickly became good friends. He would be mom's transportation to and from the hospital over the next few months. There was never a day go by that the motel owner didn't ask about me or offer some kind of assistance. This friendship between his family and mine would last long after my last operation, until his death around 1985.
Just over 6 months passed from the time I entered the Hospital until the time I returned home. As a result of that accident I have burns over 85% of my body, all of which are 3rd degree, and have had somewhere around 90 operations for skin graphs. We spent most of the next years in and out of the hospital for operations. As time passed and the operations decreased, I became more and more active. Not that I wasn't as much of a normal 5 year old as other kids.
I grew up being told by a few people that I wouldn't be able to do a lot of things that "normal" people do. But mom and dad saw to it that I lived a very normal life. They never kept me from trying new things. I always felt I wanted to prove people wrong when they said I couldn't do something due to my burns. I learned to ride a 10 speed bike because I was told I wouldn't be able to ride one. When my friends took their bikes down to the park to jump off the end of the dike, I followed along. After watching them take a few jumps, I took my 10 speed and jumped. When my friend took Judo classes, I went along to watch. This was a 10 week Judo course for beginners. At the end of the 10 weeks my friend asked if he and I could go against each other on the mat. The instructor agreed even though I had never predicated or practiced once during the past 10 weeks (after all I only watched). I won that match. When the Judo instructor started the dojo I joined. Within a few weeks I was named co-instructor. Before I could drive, I kept dad busy driving me from one volunteer outing to another. I was a Red Cross Volunteer, Boy Scout, hospital volunteer, and Civil Defense Volunteer. I also helped during the MDA Telethon for the entire 24 hours. Over the last 20 plus years I have been working within the hospitality field in restaurant work. Currently I am living in Michigan. I have one daughter from my first marriage. One of my goals has always been to be a motivational speaker. Who knows maybe someday I will do that. For now I am just enjoying life the best I can.

There are three degrees of burns. 1st degree or superficial burns heal within 3 to 5 days with no scarring. This would be similar to sunburn. Some characteristics are minor damage to the skin, pink to red, painful and skin is dry with blisters. 2nd degree burns or partial thickness heals within 10 to 21 days. It will damage, but doesn't destroy the top two layers of skin. Some characteristics are blisters, redness and swelling. The worse burn type is 3rd degree. 3rd degree completely destroy all layers of skin and could also include muscle and bone; skin graphs will be required over a long period of time. According to USA Safe Kids Worldwide, 10% of all accidental deaths involving children are from burns or fire.

Being burned isn't a life sentence of loneliness and isolation. It can be a gift of opportunities and education. One of the many things I have tried to do is prove to everyone, which set their own limits on me, wrong. I hated my burns at first. Never would I leave the house without a shirt on, not even to walk out and check the mail. Finally I decided after years of restraint to not care what others thought about seeing my burns. That decision was the best thing I could have done. It has opened doors I never knew were there.
Since that time I have used my burns to educate others about what it means to be burned. I have shared with them the struggles I have faced in the work field. I have had so many people over the years ask me about how I got burned; I started looking forward to sharing my story. I wanted people to know about my burns. I consider myself lucky in many ways. I can hide most of my burns since my face, hands and feet were not scarred.
There are some people that weren't quite as fortunate as that. They suffered burns to their hands, losing fingers and even the whole hand or arm. Others still had burns on their face so severely they lost their nose, eye lids, and hair (sometimes never to re-grow). Thanks to plastic surgery today some of those people can look in the mirror and feel good about what they see. The advancement of burn treatment has greatly helped reduce some lose of life. Many burn victims today can move on and are productive members of society.