the girl on fire.

So, after 12 days in ICU, countless protein shakes, 2 doses of morphine, 26 injections of fentanyl, 3 IV's, 120+ doses of dilaudid, 16 antibiotic drips, 54 percocets (and counting), and 1 ambulance ride through manhattan later …. here I am.

I've decided after much consideration that I'm going to blog about my experience, mainly for the following reasons:

1. when i was in the hospital i could barely find ANY sources to relate to. wtf. people literally blog about ANY and EVERYTHING, but finding someone who put their experience with burns online is near impossible. It sucked. I felt alone, and googling images of "3rd degree burns" and/or "skin grafts" will really push you over the edge.
2. hopefully this will be therapeutic.
3. i know a lot of my friends/family members are actually interested in seeing the photos of my burns, but I don't feel comfortable putting them up on social media for the world to see. this way i can provide people with a link, and it can be their decision to look or not.

Great. So now that that's all out of the way lets get to it.

Today marks my 1 week anniversary of being discharged from the hospital. I suppose I should start this thing off with how I got there in the first place though. In all honestly, I really do hate telling the story. It puts me in a bad place mentally, and gives me anxiety - so if you see me in the coming months, try and avoid the instinctive questioning of "omg, how did this happen? tell me the whole story"

#protip: when visiting people who went through something traumatic in the hospital, avoid questioning how they got there and making them go back to the moment it happen. Instead, take their mind off of things and distract them by discussing current events, or dishing gossip from your every day life. It's better to think about the future and getting healthy vs. the dwelling on the incident itself.

For the sake of this blog and opening up though, I'll humor you with the censored version:

• i was attempting to "caramelize" onions - if you know me, you know i do NOT cook.
• so, i was following the instructions that i had pulled up on my handy macbook air
• the olive oil was heating up in the pan on medium heat, but it never began to sizzle as it was supposed to
• then it started producing a sort of cloudy white smoke and i thought 'hmm, that's not good. maybe i should lower the heat.'
• as soon as i went to lower the heat the pot burst into flames. i'm not sure if the flames came from the actual pot, or the coils, or what … but it was a lot of fire and i know my immediate thought was "omg I'm going to burn down this entire building". I had visions of all of my cabinets going up in flames and i immediately knew NOT to put water onto an oil fire as it would only make things worse.
• so, for some reason or another, i grabbed the flaming pan. i was thinking that if i could remove it from the heat maybe the fire would go out.
• without going into too much detail (because I don't feel comfortable doing so at this time) basically, my clothes went up in flames, my skin started bubbling on my abdomen, hand, and thigh like something out of a Terminator movie and i instantly began screaming for help. thankfully my neighbor was home and after banging on her door and screaming for what seemed like eternity (but was likely about 45 seconds) she came to my rescue - to which i stared at her, clothing tattered, skin sloughing off, house full of smoke, and said "idk what to do, should i call 911????". she obviously said "yes" and i handed over my cell phone.
• i immediately stripped down and got into a cool shower. no, it didn't hurt - it actually was soothing and it's the best thing to do if you ever get burned. it can even help minimize scarring and the burn from getting any deeper by rinsing off the skin. 
• my neighbor manned the phones and i shouted any info she needed.
• help was on the way, at which point i realized… 'I'm naked, shit.' 
• the dispatcher on the phone said i could put clothes on, then soak towels in cold water and wrap them on me. i was like -___- 'yea, how about you go fck yourself.' there was NO way i was getting clothing on.
• so, i did what any good south floridian would do - i asked my neighbor to go in my room, dig in the top drawer of my dresser, and bring me my string bikini.
• in the past few weeks many people have said how unbelievable it was that i was that cognizant in the moment. i'm not really sure how i was able to communicate with her and provide all the info, but i think in the moment i just knew i needed to get everything out and then i could let go.

 & so 2 doses of morphine and 1 ambulance ride later, there i was at the Cornell Presbyterian Hospital in my leopard string bikini in the middle of winter in NYC. Oh, I should also mention there was a film crew present, because of course - they would be filming a new show for ABC, and obviously i signed my life away while i was high on pain killers. #yolo

Below are some pics from Day 1.
I thought i was just being held "over night for observation" and things would be fine come Monday, I could not have been more wrong.