So, they told me that as soon as I get back home, I had to contact my own surgery, and, with a view to having it redressed. So, which I did, but unfortunately, the nurse was off sick, so it couldn't be redressed when it should have been. And I phoned back the next day and she was still off sick. And so, I said to them, well, “I’m just going to have to go to the hospital, and have it redressed because it can't wait any longer”. However, they sent out a nurse.  You know, one of these, the nurses that just comes out, and she dressed it, but by that time, an infection had set in. So, it got quite bad after that, and so that was on the Tuesday. The burn had happened on the Sunday, and that was the Tuesday.  And by this Thursday, when I did get to see a nurse in the surgery, I was feeling quite ill. My temperature had gone up and things like that. So, they redressed it and told me to come back on Friday. And they were going to leave it over the weekend, but when they saw it on the Friday, they saw, no, this is this is getting worse and worse, it was all foaming and I think this time, I felt really quite ill, so they said I had to go to the hospital immediately. So, I got to the hospital, and I got through to the, you know, the room where they eventually take you, and they were quite horrified with it. By that time, it was down my arm and up my arm, and it was a bit of a mess.

And when they said that's it, you don't need to come back and they took the final dressing off, I was terrified. And I said “Oh, I don't have a dressing on my arm” because I was so used to it at this point, you know, showering with this thing on your arm all that kind of thing. You know, this big like plastic thing on your arm, oh my goodness, you learn all sorts of ways to do your hair.

How did you feel when like the first few days after the last dressing was removed?

Well, funnily enough I didn't have much time to think about it because my son was getting married, so we immediately went into the wedding thing. So, I didn't, other than don't anybody touch my arm, don't anybody come near my arm, you know, just very protective of the arm, and I really didn't have much time to think of anything other than that, to be honest. So, it was a strange time.

They would send me for a shower, and, you know, tell me to, you know, really try and get all the sludge off it really. And then they would put some kind of cream on it and redress it.

I was just so grateful that they were paying attention to it and they were so gentle. And it was actually a relief to be honest to get the dressing off and have the shower and clean it all down, and they were so gentle when they were cleaning it up, and I found it a relief to be honest just to get it redressed. Even when I was having it redressed in the 12 weeks after, I found that fine absolutely no problem. I mean, it was a pain going into the hospital obviously but, you know, they were so lovely and so caring that no, there was no problem with that.

Well, apart from the wonderful food you mean? The food was amazing! When people say that food in hospitals is terrible – absolutely amazing. They couldn't feed you enough, you know. They were always trying to feed you up, you know, and saying you need this, you need this, and that. Yeah, every member of staff, really supportive, really supportive. Not one was awful and they were always- And also another thing they had which I thought was a great idea, they had… [Mobile phone tone] Excuse me, sorry-  So they had a board, a whiteboard and they asked me when I was in, you know, as soon as I arrived, “What do you like Marilyn, what do you like doing? what do you-, what's your thoughts and things?”. I said “Oh, I like singing” you know, that kind of thing. And he wrote that on the board, "Marilyn likes singing. Marilyn likes this. Marilyn likes that." And I thought- "What kind of food do you like, Marilyn?" And, you know, whatever, you wrote that, all that up in this board. I just thought it was amazing, so that when someone came in to chat to you, they could look at the board and say “Oh," you know, "Marilyn, you like curries”, you know, that kind of thing. I thought that was a super idea, a great idea.

We tried that, and it… it was difficult because, you know, as much as, you know, my husband was putting the gloves on and all the rest of it and he did a wonderful job, you know, a wonderful job and… but it didn’t really work out. we tried it for a couple of weeks, and then we went back. And… and they said, I think you take over because they said that really, the two of us were getting tired, you know, with it. You know, I remember we were getting, you know, all worked up about it. You know, when you knew that dressing change was coming up and they said let us take the stress and the strain of that. If you don’t mind coming in twice a week, we are happy to do this for you and we were happy to let them. So yeah, we, in fairness, we did have a go at that, but it was too stressful, you know.

I was emptying the potatoes out ready for roasting into the sink. And she was bringing the fat, boiling hot fat out the oven, and she turned rather quickly towards the sink. And the fat spilled over onto my arm, and it was immediately apparent that it was quite a serious burn. And so it was just pure accident really, and I mean, she was so upset about it. But, you know, you try to make light of it. You know yourself when the skin's peeling off. It's not going to fix itself anytime soon. So yeah, that's how it happened. Pure accident really. I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. You know. Shame.