Jasmine

Jasmine’s daughter was 3½ when she sustained a burn injury to her abdomen when she reached onto a countertop and pulled down a cup of boiling water. Jasmine describes feeling upset and guilty about the incident, though believes the passing of time has helped her to heal.

Jasmine and her family were on holiday in the U.K. when her daughter aged 3½ sustained a burn to her abdomen. Jasmine had just poured boiling water from a kettle into a cup and placed it on a kitchen countertop. Her daughter reached for the cup and accidentally spilled the boiling water over herself, burning her abdomen.

As Jasmine was unsure about how to best treat a burn injury, she looked online for first-aid advice. After applying cold water to her daughter’s abdomen, she travelled to a nearby clinic who were able to give them the attention they needed and referred them to a bigger clinic to change the burn dressings.

When Jasmine and her family arrived at the bigger clinic, the staff were surprised she had been referred to them as her daughter’s burn was relatively small in size. The staff also made a comment saying, “I don’t even think you should be here”. Jasmine felt this was unprofessional of the staff to say in front of her and her family.

Before her daughter’s accident, Jasmine and her family did not realise how common burn injuries are, or that the care of burns is often long-term. Initially, she believed the burn would “go away” after it is cleaned and dressed. Jasmine said her family were “learning as it happened”.

Jasmine’s experience of burn care was mixed. On the one hand, she felt “grateful” that there was a specific facility where her daughter could be treated and where she would receive expert care. On the other hand, however, Jasmine felt that the aftercare she received was “non-existent” and this made the recovery period for her daughter more challenging. Jasmine felt that she was not given enough information or advice about how to manage her daughter’s scar, such as which creams may minimise scarring. She believes this may be because of lack of resources and funding within the NHS.

Jasmine believes it would have been beneficial to speak to someone about ongoing skincare after her daughter was discharged. She felt that the “very present and painful” issues, such as dressing changes, were dealt with adequately, but that psychological and ongoing skincare could have been prioritised better. Jasmine believes that mental health and physical health go “hand in hand”, so healthcare professionals should treat each aspect equally.

Her advice to parents of children with burn injuries is “be kind to yourself”. Jasmine wants other parents to be aware of not only how their child is feeling, but how they feel themselves, too.

Jasmine went to her friend, who was a dermatologist, for advice about managing her daughter’s burn.

So, I had to research everything, speak to my friends, speak to dermatologists that were friends of ours and ask them for their assistance and they were the ones that pulled through for me to help me. So, I went privately through just friends and one of my friends is a dermatologist and well recognised in her field and she has a daughter the same age as mine and she said to me “I want you to use this specific cream, this will help.” I got it through a friend, and I thought, ‘Jeez, I wish everyone was offered this. This is so helpful. You have someone who’s an experienced professional in their industry who does this every day and they’re giving me something, they’re giving me a gift. I went out and brought the cream privately.

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Jasmine, whose child had a burn, feels more equipped to deal with challenging situations as a parent.

In relation to your parenting style and your behaviour as a parent, have you found any aspects of parenting more difficult because of the burn?

No. No, in fact, you become more courageous and more resilient.

Ok, could you talk a little bit more about that?

Well, you’re accustomed to dealing with an emergency. You have the shock of one and, if it happens again, you know you have that experience of ‘How am I going to manage this? How am I going to deal with this in a non-panicked way?’ So, it’s like trying anything out for the first time. Riding a bike, you know, you’re going to fall off the first time or maybe not do it so well but when you get back on the second time, your muscle memory is a little bit more attuned to how to manage it.

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For Jasmine, regularly applying creams to her daughter added another tasks to being a mum.

And time, I’m more time poor because I now have to spend the time, for the last two years, used to be four times a day I was treating her. Four times a day for almost two years, making sure that the area is covered. And you have creams with you when you go away or when you go on a sleepover and, you know, it’s time and it’s thought and it’s just one more thing to do.

And is that difficult for you?

It can be, you know, and then if you forget you think ‘Oh jeez, you forgot’ and then you feel guilty because you forgot about it. So, it can be difficult but then you just have to think ‘Ok, I’m doing the best I can. Let’s try to stay positive, I’m doing the best I can.’

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Jasmine spent a lot of time applying moisturiser to her daughter’s burns.

I’m more time poor because I now have to spend the time, for the last two years, used to be four times a day I was treating her. Four times a day for almost two years, making sure that the area is covered. And you have creams with you when you go away or when you go on a sleepover and, you know, it’s time and it’s thought and it’s just one more thing to do.

Yeah, and is that difficult for you?

It can be, you know, and then if you forget you think “Oh jeez, you forgot” and then you feel guilty because you forgot about it. So, it can be difficult but then you just have to think “Ok, I’m doing the best I can. Let’s try to stay positive, I’m doing the best I can.”

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Jasmine felt that she was left on her own to manage her daughter’s burn once it had been initially treated.

I said, you know, I would expect a better service for children. At least tell me the name of the creams to buy, you know. Have a little bit more education on what kind of base creams are going to heal scars quicker. Not just a “Oh go buy a cream, a water-based cream.” That’s an extremely unhelpful thing. I’d like to know if there’s essential oils that are going to help, um, if massage will help. You know, all those sorts of thing and they provide that added care. They’re just, you’re very much on your own. So, I had to research everything, speak to my friends, speak to dermatologists that were friends of ours and ask them for their assistance and they were the ones that pulled through for me to help me. I mean, the burns clinic really should be a centre of excellence for providing options for parents and they certainly didn’t do that.

It sounds like that you feel the kind of healing and recovering process and the education behind that was missing from the care you received?

Yeah, they do sort of like an ambulance service. Let’s patch it up, let’s treat it, let’s heal it, let’s prevent it from getting infected – which are all very important – but everything else, you’re on your own. You know, maybe that’s the way the system is designed, I don’t know, because like I said, this was very new to our family.

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Jasmine felt that a better balance of empathy was needed.

Yeah. They even said to me "It’s not that bad, they’ll be fine."

How did that make you feel, when they said it’s not that bad?

I was surprised that they said that. They said, I think she said to me “I don’t even think you should be here. We only treat people with…” I think they do a certain percentage and higher, and they were surprised when we arrived, and they took off the bandage that was there. To me, it looked hideous and awful, you know, but obviously they see these every day and they said they didn’t, they didn’t send me away, obviously, but they said, you know, they looked at each other, the two, and said “Oh, this isn’t bad. We deal with much worse than this.” So, I mean, they might, but that’s not my problem. You know, that’s not something that they need to say in front of me. They need to treat it and I think that they probably would have provided the same level of knowledge and care to someone who had a far worse injury. They would have given them their pamphlet; they would have said "This is all really normal. Come back weeks 2, 4 & 6” or whatever it was.

I think you recalled that they kind of looked at each other and were like “Oh, it’s not that bad.” How did that make you feel?

Yeah, I think it depends on how you look at it. I mean, I looked at it in a way that 'Ok, well, maybe I should feel a little bit better about this. This isn’t that bad, ok, and they’ve seen far worse, which means people do heal, they do recover.' So, I thought 'ok'… I felt reassured, but when it’s your child suffering and going through that process, you also want a balance of empathy and that didn’t exist. So, there needed to be a bit more balance there.

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