When will I feel ready to go back to work???

It's that time of year, black (insert day of the week here) when the alarm is re-set, the train timetable consulted and the emails reluctantly opened. Back to work. I usually sulk for the first 10 minutes after waking up but once I'm on my way, I'm jubilant. I love my job; I love my career. I'm proud of the fact I chose it, I trained specifically for it and I have made myself good at it. This year though, I feel quite different. It's New Year, a new start and people have been asking me when I intend to go back to work. That question sends splinters of ice through my veins.

Before Christmas I was ready to talk about going back. December was 5 months since 'it' happened. January seemed so far away, there was so much going on in those days in-between. I was to move house, back to the parents' for a month and I had plans full of family visits during Christmas and New Year. Yet suddenly, I am here. Moved house. Preparing to move again start of February. All celebrated out. Absolutely and totally shattered.

I wanted to start running again this New Year but when I went for a brisk walk with my other half on Monday I lasted around 12 minutes. All of a sudden I could barely breathe and my legs felt like lead. It terrifies me that this is how unfit I have become. I might be out of the woods but everywhere I look there are still trees!

I know this is something that others worry about as I've read the thoughts of other burn survivors on the Katie Piper discussion forum, 'how and when do I get back into things?' Click here to read.

I think it's important to remember that there is no rush to get back to work. Yes, it's important to work. Mental health studies have shown that work is good for people, it gives them a sense of fulfillment, increases self-esteem and provides companionship. But it is not worth going back to work too early only to feel stressed, become unwell, knock your confidence or hinder your recovery. I really want to go back to work. In my mind I drive in the gates and everything goes back to normal. I forget this ever happened. In reality, work is a huge hurdle and will have to be handled gradually if I am to cope. It's another journey, one I'm not sure I'm yet ready to take.

Grrrrrrr, blahhhh, humph.

Today is a low day. The sun barely rose in the sky, leaving the day dingy and me feeling very blah. All the wine has been mulled, all the pies have been scoffed, everyone has gone home and I've hit the lull. All the uplifting and inspirational things I have spouted suddenly seem flat and lack-lustre.

I have been looking forward to the end of December, waiting to say goodbye to what has been the best and worst year I've ever experienced. Now it is nearly here, I look at myself in the mirror and despair. Things have improved to a degree but I've got such a long way to go. I've been trying to be positive, continuously thinking, 'it will improve, it will improve.' Now I am thinking, 'when will it improve, when???'

It seems like forever ago but it's only been 5 months.

My next personal deadline is my holiday in August. I'm going to Turkey and it's going to be extremely hot which will bring several challenges with it. By then it will have been a year since the accident and I'm hoping my injuries will be much less noticeable. I want to be able to wear Summer clothes without being self-conscious and I don't want to be uncomfortable in the heat. I considered not going but there are six people going and I didn't want to be the one to miss out. I need to get on with my life.

I still have the rash on my arm and it only seems to be getting worse. I finally have an appointment with a consultant on January 17th, it's only taken 4 months for the NHS to decide it needs treating! I've also made an appointment privately with a Physiotherapy to start Acupuncture and whatever else they recommend.

Being zipped into a compression vest night and day is getting tiresome. I only have 2, so my entire life seems to be spent around washing them and trying to make sure they are clean enough to wear.

When I look back to how awful things were in the first few weeks, I realise how far I've come but when I look in the mirror, I realise how far I still have to go.

It’s Chrrrrriiiiisssttttmmmassss!!!!

This morning I opened the curtains to a stream of sunshine. The skies were clear, crisp blue and the road behind the house glistened with a fine sheen of ice.

The fields had been sprayed with a shimmer of white and the bare arms of the white birch tree outside my window looked as though they had been dusted with icing powder. December has crept up on me slowly and tapped me on the shoulder with his chilly fingers. It seems like a blink ago that I was lying in the recovery position, the July sun beating down on me, knowing that something terrible and life-changing had just happened.

Christmas will mean more to me this year. We all know it should be about the people, not the presents. We know it should be about spending time with those we love, putting feuds behind us and showing goodwill to all men. Yet somehow it slides into too much to eat, much too much to drink and before you know it, you’ve given someone a snippy answer and someone’s snapped back.

This year, I’m going to be one of those annoying people who say, ‘remember what’s important.’ Believe me, you don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone. Look in the mirror and be proud of yourself, be kind to yourself and love what you’ve got. Then look around you, at your friends and family and remind yourself how lucky you are.

As you know I’ve just read Katie Piper’s book ‘Beautiful,’ and her alternative Christmas message, aired a few years back on Channel 4, says it all. I’ve borrowed her powerful words to post here.

‘My life before was very self-absorbed, self-obsessed, and it took a tragedy for me to reassess my life and how I felt and what I thought was important. Don’t wait until you lose somebody. Don’t wait until it’s too late. Appreciate the beautiful things and the beautiful people that you have in your life now…My Christmas message would be to tell people that I used to hide away and be ashamed of how I looked, frightened of people’s reactions. If people are doing that or feel that way now, I would urge them not to, because they don’t have to feel like that. You can become accepted, you can regain the confidence. And for the people that need to do the accepting, who maybe freak out when they see somebody who’s different, you absolutely don’t have to.'

Even when you think things can never move forward and you feel so low, there’s always a way out. I never thought that I’d be sitting here saying this. Never.’

So Merry Christmas everybody; enjoy, appreciate and savour.

Something for the Christmas list; ‘Beautiful’ by Katie Piper.

I’ve always been a fast reader. I devour books, whipping through pages so quickly that people think I can’t possibly be taking it all in. The more I enjoy a book, the faster I go, until the words become an independent chatter in my head and I’m lost in the story. As an English teacher this is an important skill; I can get the gist of things quickly and I can speed-read my way through a text to teach the next day. The downside is that good books never last more than a day or so! As a child, my Dad once watched me zoom through The Diary of Adrian Mole in 3 hours and couldn’t believe I’d actually read it. He set up a quiz and watched me I disbelief as I answered every question correctly, sometimes quoting directly from the book.

So when I picked up Katie Piper’s ‘Beautiful,’ I knew it wasn’t going to take me long. I was hooked and spent the next 4 hours churning through the pages, only stopping occasionally to wipe the tears from my eyes and swallow the lump in my throat. We all know Katie Piper and we all know she has a harrowing story. Yet to read it first hand and empathise with her emotional journey is very different. She’d chosen her words carefully to explain exactly how she felt and didn’t shy away from the more personal details. It was a riveting although difficult read.

Katie’s attitude is one that I think people who are experiencing any difficulties in their lives should strive to adopt. Her mantra, ‘you’re a survivor, not a victim,’ is a potent one. Those who see themselves as victims of circumstance feel powerless to help themselves and in the case of emotionally and physically gruelling circumstances, you have to help yourself as much as possible. Taking some control and being a ‘survivor’ is often hard to achieve but very satisfying once done.

Katie’s Uncle says to her, ‘you haven’t just survived, you’re thriving too.’ It’s no good just existing day to day. As an individual you have the right to lead a full, flourishing life bursting with the things you enjoy and surrounded by people who love you. Much of this is to do with your own actions, being brave enough to try new things and take opportunities and not always worrying what others think of you.



If you have had an accident, particularly a burns accident, this is a very reassuring read. The medical team keep saying to Katie, ‘it won’t always be like this, or look like this’ and her recent press photos prove they were right - she excludes confidence and fabulousness. As someone in the early stages of recovery and skin changes, it’s positive for me to see the results of time and patience. Katie also found she disliked things like hairdryers, cooking, candles, hot drinks and so on. This is something I’ve found difficult (especially around Christmas time: chestnuts roasting on an open fire; mulled wine; fairy lights and all that!) but am pleased to know that it’s something burn survivors do, a process they go through. It doesn’t matter how you were burned, fear of being burned by something else, even if completely unlikely or illogical, is common.

Overall, I’d recommend Katie’s book to anyone, as a reminder of what’s important in life and how fragile our construct of our sense of self can be if it is based on a superficial form of beauty. Katie is beautiful, her friends and family are beautiful and her medical team are beautiful. There is a wide world of beauty out there and it doesn’t all look the same.

‘Burnt and fabulous, that was me.’



Life is like an hourglass......

Eventually everything hits the bottom, and all you have to do is wait it out until someone comes along and turn it around again.

Katie Piper, looking fabulous

Recovering from an accident takes a combination of time and mental and physical power. Unless you have had an accident, you can't appreciate the level of effort that goes into becoming yourself again. Although a large part of this is physical, it also takes time to feel mentally well and 'yourself.' Any one who has experienced a trauma, for example a break-up or a death in the family may look back on that time of stress and wonder how they got through it and managed to function day to day. These periods of time may seem blurry or particularly vivid. You remember how you felt, what happened around you, almost as if it's a programme you are watching on TV, or if you are watching it happening to someone else.

Once you have battled your way through and taken the steps towards recovery, you start to reflect. For me, once I begun to reflect, this was when I realised I was starting to feel like myself again. I was beginning to enjoy going out and socialising instead of it feeling like a battle, something I 'should' do. I felt less self-aware and this helped me feel more confident again.


Someone who should be incredibly proud of themselves is Katie Piper. Her photo was taken at the Jersey Boys west end show recently and she looks fabulous. Not only does she look fabulous, she looks confident in the way she stands and the way she smiles. Katie has had a difficult battle during her long recovery and hopefully she is on her way back to feeling like herself again.

Once upon a time Sleeping Ugly was a problem but thanks to the magical powers of Valerian root they all slept happily ever after.

An average adult needs between 7-9 hours sleep a night to function cheerfully in the day. An average burn patient needs more than this and here's the annoying part...they rarely are able to get it.

In the first few months after my injury I slept most of the day. This was mostly because of the tremendous power of painkillers Oxycodone, Tramadol and the like. I'd get up, have breakfast, spend a few hours laying on the sofa and then have an afternoon nap. Get up for dinner, some TV, then go to bed. As I was so drowsy from the medication, it was fairly easy to sleep, despite my massive Chubb's Peterson cast. The problem came when I stopped taking the Oxycodone painkiller.

Oxycodone is a habit-forming and a hazardous drug if not used properly. When I came out of my first month of injury haze (the brain fog that envelopes you shrouds all else) and realised the power of this drug I couldn't wait to come off it. I knew that experiencing hideous withdrawal symptoms was a possibility as when having my skin grafts done the hospital had forgotten to prescribe me any of my routine medication. Not only did I have the most painful operation known to mankind, I also went cold turkey.

If you're coming off something like this you should speak to your Doctor about how to do it as you need proper information on the least stressful way to do it. Me, I'm all about finding out for yourself. I took the dosage down every week until I was on pretty much nothing and then I stopped.

Oh dear.

The side effects were rough. Ever seen Leonardo Di Caprio in 'The Basketball Diaries?' O.k, it wasn't quite as bad as that but I felt terrible for about a week and half. The biggest problem of all was becoming an insomniac. I didn't sleep for more than a few hours at a time for an entire week. As I was used to spending my time sleeping, this came as quite a shock. I was literally 'out of it.' I didn't know what was going on, what day it was, my muscles felt heavy, I felt panicky and had a fast heartbeat.

Then there were the nightmares. I'd had a couple previously, I think everyone does after a trauma. Your mind is trying to make sense of the non-sense that's just taken place and as such you get some interesting albeit frightening narratives happening in your head. I was told by a counsellor that the more intelligent and creative among us endure the worst nightmares/flashbacks/ and post-trauma symptoms. A very veiled compliment if ever I heard one!

If you're in this situation, you will just have to wait it out. Sleep as much as possible, when you wake up perhaps read for a bit. When you are really tired, don't fight it. Even if you have company they will have to leave early so you can rest, as you are likely to have another wide-eyed night when you are trying to sleep. It's important to keep trying because our bodies heal during sleep and as burn survivors, we need every extra minute of healing we can get!


I'm a bit further along in the healing process now and although it was only a few months ago, that horrible time seems quite distant. I still need lots of sleep though. At the moment I'm averaging between 9 and 10 hours a night and I could probably have an afternoon nap if I made time for it. I'm finding that I do wake up a lot and I often have very disturbed sleep.

Recently I made a discovery of epic proportions, Valerian root tea. Thank you Tesco! Valerian has sedative properties and because of the way it works, suppressing the nervous system, it can also help with nervous tension, excitability, stress, intestinal colic and sleeping disorders such as disturbed sleep.

As with any drug, even the herbal kind, you shouldn't overdo it because you can upset the positive 'side-effects' and end up with adverse effects. If you are going to take it as a nutritional supplement then check the strength and how to take it. It can also interfere with some other drugs and shouldn't be taken when pregnant. As with any sedative, you must NOT drink alcohol with it. (Check these things here, and here people but remember the positive effects as these list of side-effects are quite off-putting.)

Every night this week I've drunk one cup of Valerian tea about 20 minutes before bed and I have slept through my 9-10 hours solidly. I am happier drinking the tea because it's fairly weak in strength and I'm unlikely to get 'dependency problems,' it's herbal tea from Tesco's. I bought the Dr Stuart's tea because they have higher concentrates of active ingredients in them. Therefore they are a bit more expensive but you get what you pay for.

They also do a Tranquility tea and a Chamomile tea.

Last but not least, I thought I'd better mention that it's an acquired taste, somewhere between Chamomile and hamster cage. Overall though, it's mellow green liquid holds promises of deep, undisturbed sleep. Worth it.

Something to ponder.

Your Changed Self.

In grief we learn to identify our losses and define our changed selves. The physical and emotional healing that follows can be a long, involved journey. As you acknowledge your burn injury and give yourself permission to experience the thoughts and feelings that coincide, you begin to assign new meaning to your life. The roles, behaviors, relationships, needs, goals, and expectations you once held will inevitably change. With each new role you assume, each changed relationship you nurture, and each new behavior you adopt, you are reinforcing
your changed self.



From living with a burn injury

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