Dan's Fund for Burns :: Need some help? :: Survivors stories
Message from Polly Miller, founder & Director of Dan's Fund for Burns...
Since I’ve been burnt I have had the pleasure of meeting many other Burn Survivors who are courageous, kind, sympathetic and simply amazing people. I have been lucky enough to meet them through a support group set up, with the help of Dan’s Fund For Burns, at the Chelsea & Westminster Hospital in London and through the internet and this website.
Here is a selection of their stories from Polly:
Katie: My Beautiful Face
Katie Piper was young and beautiful; a model and budding TV presenter, the 24-year-old had a glowing future ahead of her. But on 31st March 2008 a vicious acid attack destroyed her face – and with it her career and life as she knew it.
More than a year on, and having undergone countless operations and rounds of physiotherapy, Katie has now chosen to give up her anonymity and tell her own story for the first time.
This remarkable Cutting Edge film will be shown on Channel 4 on October 29th. Including CCTV footage of the attack, it follows Katie as she undergoes pioneering treatment and attempts to re-build her life, while two men stand trial for the horrific attack.
Katie bravely tells her story with compelling frankness, surprising humour and an extraordinary lack of self-pity as she tries to accept her appearance and start again.
A couple of weeks before the attack Katie’s life seemed perfect - she lived in London with friends and had a hectic work and social life. “I was a fun person,” says Katie. “I had lots of friends. If I went somewhere and people met me for the first time they would say ‘Oh, you’re really pretty’ and I would think ‘Yeah, I am’.”
She’d just started seeing a new boyfriend. Thirty-two year-old Danny Lynch had been following Katie’s modeling career and asked her out for a date on Facebook.
But Danny wanted to see Kate so much that her friends called him her ‘number one fan’. His attentions became intense and jealous.
After dating for a fortnight, the couple booked into a hotel after a night out in London. But when Katie wanted to go straight to sleep, Danny became aggressive and threatened her - Katie endured eight hours of violent sexual abuse.
She was only able to leave when she convinced Danny that they could still be a couple. Katie returned to her flat, but was too scared to call her family or the police.
Two days after the rape attack Katie had still not left her flat, but Danny called incessantly demanding she leave to read messages he had left on her Facebook account at a local internet café.
When she finally agreed, Katie was unaware that a 19-year-old man, Stefan Sylvestre, was pacing up and down Golders Green High Street waiting for her. In his clenched hands he held a cup of sulphuric acid, with orders from Danny Lynch.
When Katie left the flat, on the phone to Danny, Sylvestre approached her and threw the acid into her face.
“As I came out of the door, this guy walked towards me in a hoodie,” Katie says in the film. “His arms were locked holding this coffee cup. So I thought well he must be begging. I started to try and get my money out of my bag and as I did this guy just went like whoosh. It hit like this side of my face and it was eating across my face and it was like some contagious disease eating me up.”
Katie ran into her local café to get help, an ambulance was called and she was rushed into intensive care.
The attack was caught on CCTV and Sylvestre was arrested. He admitted throwing the acid, but claimed he had been ordered to carry out the attack by Danny Lynch.
Meanwhile Katie’s parents were called by the police to tell them what had happened.
“I can remember going ‘Not her face, please not her face’,” says Katie’s mum Diane. “I knew if anything happened to her face as far as she was concerned it would be the end of everything.”
The acid destroyed the skin on much of Katie’s face, neck and hands, and left her blind in one eye. It also burnt her nose and throat so severely that she needs to be fed through a tube in her stomach.
Her sight may never be restored and she has undergone over thirty reconstructive operations on her skin and oesophagus. Katie also wears a special plastic pressure mask for 23 hours a day, in an effort to flatten her scars.
After the attack, Katie spent seven weeks in the burns unit at the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital. She was placed in an induced coma and spent ten days in intensive care.
Surgeons, led by consultant Mr Jawad, took the drastic decision to remove the skin from Katie’s entire face and use a skin substitute called Matriderm to re-build the foundations before grafting skin from her back onto her face – it’s the first operation of its kind to be done in one operation.
During the early stages of her recovery Katie was unable to talk. She could only communicate through writing – at one point she wrote to her mum Diane “Kill me”.
And when Katie was handed a mirror to see herself for the first time, she thought there was something wrong with it.
“I remember thinking, you know, someone’s going to have to hand me another mirror because this one is totally broken,” says Katie in the film. “And then I realised that it was me. And I just wanted to just smack it in my face and just cut my face open and tear the whole thing off.”
As well as her NHS care in Britain, Katie was sent to a specialist rehabilitation centre in France and at home her days are filled with specialist scar management routines. She relies on her mum and dad for help and Diane has given up full-time work to care for her daughter. But thanks to the treatment, Katie has made amazing progress.
“She became very special, because of the nature of the accident,” says consultant Mr Jawad. “She’s very young and very brave, and very determined and she’s doing very well. She made us all very proud and gave us a lot of hope for a lot of other people. “
However, as well as physical scars, the attack has left its mental mark. Katie is understandably obsessed with ensuring that every door and window at her parents’ home is locked; she suffers from nightmares and can’t sleep through the night.
“My appearance is a constant reminder of what he did to me and almost like I belong to him because it’s not really my face it’s the one he created through the attack,” says Katie. “I’ll always have his marks all over my face and all over my body. I’ll always, look in a mirror and be reminded of what happened to me.”
Danny Lynch pleaded his innocence, but was found guilty of inciting the acid attack in October 2008. However the jury could not reach a verdict on the rape charge and a second trial finally found Lynch guilty of both crimes in April 2009.
Lynch was given two life sentences, and will serve at least sixteen years in jail. Stefan Sylvestre received a 12-year sentence, with a minimum of six years behind bars.
With her attackers convicted, Katie is determined to re-build her life. The film follows Katie as she finally steps outside her parents’ house alone for the first time since the attack. And she describes what she hopes the future will hold.
“I think I’ve got the chance to build a life,” says Katie in the film. “I don’t it’s going to be that easy, but I wanna try. I want to move on from my attack, and I don’t want to be a scared little child. I want to blossom into a confident, able woman.
“My dream would be just to live a normal life and after all this be able to meet somebody again and learn to trust a guy and the normal dream: a girl wants to get married and have kids.”
Katie: My Beautiful Face will be shown as part of Channel 4’s Cutting Edge strand on Thursday, October 29th at 9.00pm.
The film is produced and directed by Jessie Versluys for Mentorn Media, the Executive Producers are Dan Goldsack and John Willis.
The Piper family have already raised more than £3500 for Dan's Fund and Katie's brother, Paul, is is running the Virgin London Marathon 2010 too.
Why not support him and the family's other efforts to raise money for Dan's Fund Donate now? To go to Paul's fundraising page simply follow this link >>>
Katherine Jones – The Dangers of Candles
Our last Newsletter reported the case of an individual burned by tea lights – following is Katherine's own story:
I was severely burnt when my clothing caught fire at a friend's party where tea light candles had been scattered around the room and on the ledge of the balcony.
I was standing on the balcony chatting to a friend when I started to feel a little hot, before I had time to step away from the ledge the bottom of my top had caught alight and I was quickly engulfed in flames.
I suffered 1st, 2nd and 3rd degree burns covering my back and left and right arms, totalling 10% of my body.
The burns were the worst on the left hand side as that’s the side the flame had started. After 3 months at home with many sleepless nights, hospital visits and operations, I finally returned to work.
During my time off I contacted Dan's Fund for Burns who offered some advice and counselling, which helped me to rebuild my confidence.
Although I am still undergoing treatment and skin grafting I was determined that I would run the London Marathon this year and, I did!!! raising over £2,000 for DFFB.
Let this be a lesson for us all when lighting candles - it's not to say that we can't enjoy them, but we should bear in mind that they should never be left as an open flame but instead housed within a container.
It's amazing how such a tiny candle can cause such a lot of damage.
Sue Thompson attends the Chelsea & Westminster support group – she is a lady who was badly burnt by a gas explosion in her flat 12 years ago. She suffered 40% burns to her face, back, hands and front and despite endless surgery and pain, she has the most fantastic outlook on life. I am pleased to say she was recently happily married and is keen to help others that have been burnt. During my time with her she shared a poem with me that she had written shortly after coming out of hospital, when faced with the reality of dealing with the public eye.
"I was burnt in a fire just over three years ago,
At first it was a real struggle to face the world and have some get up and go,
Most people that I meet are kind
They can see through the scars and find,
The same old me
Just the same as I always used to be.Now and again, I would come across the odd one who would make me cross.
Some would stop, stare, laugh and point at me
I would think, why can’t they see
I am still the same old me.
Just the same as I always used to be.Now I find I don’t care
Let them stop, look and stare
I know that I am still me
Just the same as I used to be.So when you see someone like me
Be as thoughtful as you can be
Remember to look through the scars
And see
The person beneath
After all, aren’t we all the same underneath?The World is changing every day
Lets hope people’s attitude changes the same way
I know it won’t change over night
But with your help it just might "S
I've also had the pleasure of meeting Stephen Gavin, a chap burnt
in an arson attack on his car several years ago.
Stephen, who is happily married with 2 kids, is the life and soul of any
group, constantly cracking jokes, was kind enough to share with me his
memories of after the event.
An extract of his writing is shown here but if you like to read the complete
transcript simply follow this link >>>
MY DREAMS
A Short Compilation of Words Written by a Burns Survivor
PRELUDE
Burns a nasty subject, very painful and quite disfiguring,
but not all is lost
Life goes on for us all.