Apartment fire victim back on her feet after 50-day ordeal
Filipina undergoes five surgeries to treat horrific burns after ‘walking though fire’
Sharjah resident Maria Marissa has walked through fire and lived to tell the tale — literally! A fortnight ago, the 35-year-old Filipina walked out of Burjeel Speciality Hospital Sharjah, more than 50 days after suffering serious burn injuries all over her body.
Yehya Salah Kayed, the hospital’s director operations, plastic surgeon Dr Raed Farhat and the burn and rehab teams worked for weeks to help Marissa along the long and difficult road to recovery.
Marissa underwent five surgeries “It was quite a challenge to maintain her fluid and electrolyte balance as she had lost almost 40 per cent of her skin. In such cases, even the slightest imbalance can prove fatal,” Dr Farhat said.
What happened?
Marissa and her husband Raymund Lacbayu were severely burnt in a fire that engulfed their ninth-floor apartment on Al Wahda Road, Sharjah, on February 4. “We woke up to flames devouring our belongings,” Marissa told Gulf News. “It was terrifying. Our entire apartment was on fire. The flames raced up my bed, licking at my arms and legs and scorching by back and abdomen.”
‘I must have blacked out’
Marissa could feel her flesh blistering as she stumbled out of bed, walked through the fire and scampered down the stairs, a half-burnt piece of cloth still stuck to the skin of her badly-charred right leg.
“I have no recollection of what happened next. I must have blacked out,” she said.
Unknown to Marissa, her husband remained trapped in the balcony until noon when he was rescued by firemen. He suffered second-degree burns.
“Marissa had second and third-degree burns, some of which had penetrated deep into the layers of her skin and fat in her lower extremity, back and abdomen,” Dr Farhat said. “This meant we had to remove damaged tissues before beginning the process of covering the wounds with temporary skin and then grafting skin from other parts of the body that were not burnt,”
Marissa is recovering fast, but it will still be some time before she resumes her job at a mall in Sharjah. “I never give up hope,” she said.