Warning: This post contains graphic images.
A mom ended up in the ICU after a summertime fire pit quickly raged out of control, burning down their family’s home and leaving her body covered with third-degree burns.
‘I was ripping all my clothes off,” she said. “My husband kept turning me over, trying to put the flames out.”
Kennedy News and Media
Emma Colwell had third-degree burns after wind blew lighter fluid on her.
Andrew put Emma into the shower to help extinguish the fire. “I looked down and saw skin all over the bath. I was in a state of shock,” the mom of two said. The situation quickly grew dire as the home filled with smoke — and Andrew helped her flee their now-burning home.
“I thought I was standing at the end of the drive shouting for help, but afterwards people told me nothing was coming out,” she said. “They said my skin was melting off and the reality hit me: My life was never going to be the same again.”
Emma was admitted to the intensive care unit with third-degree burns over nearly 30% of her body, with the worst burns being on her back and legs. Third-degree burns are the most serious type, the Mayo Clinic explains, impacting “all of the layers of skin and sometimes the fat and muscle tissue under the skin.”
Kennedy News and Media
Emma Colwell had burns over nearly a third of her body.
“We didn’t know if Emma was going to make it,” Andrew told the outlet, as she underwent ten skin grafts and stayed in the hospital for a month. When she was well enough to be discharged, she no longer had a home to go to.
“We lost everything,” Emma said. “I have good days and bad days where I worry about further surgeries. I never thought anything like this would happen to me. It happened in the [snap] of a finger and I could have died.”
“It made me aware of who and what’s important in my life. [I’m] not taking anything for granted.”
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