Flick of a cigarette lighter blew my life apart
TV show has helped Dawn face the world again BUBBLY grandmother Dawn Abbott was a home carer and social butterfly living life to the full. Then a terrifying split-second mistake nearly killed her and left her with catastrophic injuries. Now, more than five years on, she’s fighting back with the help of Davina Mccall.
Dawn had been looking for a screwdriver in the garden shed the day her life was changed forever. While searching around, she spilled white spirit on herself. Then a few moments later, after clearing it up, she spotted a cigarette lighter nearby belonging to her husband. Out of force of habit, Dawn flicked it to see if it worked.
The result was devastating.
The mum-of-three suffered 55% burns to her face, neck and upper body. She was burned so badly she was unrecognisable.
And it left her a prisoner in her home for years – until she transformed her life on Davina Mccall’s ITV show This Time Next Year.
Dawn, 54, says: “I’d been mucking about in the shed, lifted a can of paint up and knocked some white spirit over me. As I put the bottle to one side I saw a lighter. I picked it up as I had a few indoors not working.
“Stupidly, I flicked it open. It was my husband John’s and he had the flame really high for his joinery. It was just instant. I don’t remember anything after that.
“I’m told by family and paramedics I must have got to the house and put the flames out with water. I was alone but somehow I managed to call 999. If I hadn’t done that, I would not be here.”
Dawn of Swaffham, Norfolk, was airlifted to Broomfield Hospital in Chelmsford after the accident in September
2013. She technically died twice before being put in an induced coma for six weeks. When she woke in hospital, she had no idea what had happened. Dawn says: “I couldn’t move at all. I thought I must have had a car crash. It was months before I knew what had happened. I don’t think I could take it in. The drugs they give you are so strong.
“I lost my breasts. I’ve got bald patches where hair follicles burned. My legs were used for so many skin grafts they are a mess too. It was a nightmare.”
Dawn’s husband John, now 55, daughters Leanne, 33, who has five children, Lucy, 30, and son Luke, 19, had to make a fivehour round trip to visit the Essex hospital from their Norfolk home. Dawn says: “Lucy took a couple of months off work to be with me. My son was only 14 so it was tough. They’ve all had to have counselling.”
It was about five months before Dawn was ready to look in a mirror. It stunned her. “I said ‘that isn’t me, it’s a monster. I don’t want to look at it anymore.’”
“Then they started taking me off the medication. The pain was horrific.” Dawn was in hospital for nearly nine months, enduring countless ops and skin grafts. When she got home she hid herself away.
Suffering from depression, anxiety and panic attacks, as well as excruciating pain, Dawn didn’t leave the house for two years. In 2017 her family encouraged her to go on Davina Mccall’s ITV show This Time Next Year, in which people make life-changing pledges. She vowed that in 12 months she’d find the courage to pick up her grandchildren from school. Her transformation is screened tonight. Dawn explains: “I felt stripped of everything, my dignity, my feelings. I wouldn’t go out. Now and again when it was a bit dark I’d run to the bin and back. I was a prisoner in my own home.
“I didn’t want to see anyone or talk to anyone on the phone, not even family or friends. I’d panic if someone knocked on the door.” Dawn struggles to cope with people staring at her. When she did pluck up courage to go out she was mocked.
She says: “I was sitting in the car at Tesco waiting for John, wearing a scarf. A car pulled up and a man started laughing at me, shouting to his mate, ‘Come and have a look at this!’ By the time John got back I was a crying wreck.”
The TV pledge gave Dawn the push she needed to gradually build up the confidence to post a letter or walk across a car park by herself.
She says: “I don’t lower my head now. I look at everyone. Because I appear more confident, people don’t look so much. Inside I’m a quivering wreck, but I’m gaining confidence.
“Picking up the kids from school was lovely. They call me Nanny Dip Dip because I’m dippy and they were so excited.” John, who gave up work to look after Dawn, says: “She was so bubbly and sociable before the accident. I didn’t think she’d ever go out again. This is a turning point in her life.” Dawn adds: “I feel now that I’ve got a future again.”
■■This Time Next Year, tonight, ITV, 8pm. Dawn before and after shed accident
It was months before I looked in a mirror. I said ‘that isn’t me, it’s a monster. I don’t want to look at it any more’