Set on fire by a birthday candle
Her little girl was so excited to be turning five but as Tanya Murray, 33, explains, things went very wrong…
ucking my daughter Karla into bed one evening, I noticed her looking at me quizzically. ‘How long is it until I’m five, Mummy?’ she asked.
‘Six weeks,’ I said. I knew that would feel like forever to Karla but it was enough time for me to start planning her celebrations. I loved making birthdays special for her and her older brother and sister, Callum, six, and Katlyn, nine.
The next morning, I was woken by the sound of Karla getting out of bed. I rolled over
Tto check the time – 5.45am! Nearly two hours earlier than normal. ‘Karla,’ I called out to the next room. ‘What are you doing, sweetheart?’ She called back, ‘I need a drink.’ Then I remembered she’d left her cup in the living room. ‘OK, you get it and then we’ll have another sleep before nursery,’ I said.
Sudden scream
I lay back, listening as she padded across the flat. Only then, rather than hearing her return to her room, everything went quiet. As I started to get up to check on her, suddenly I heard a piercing scream. ‘Karla!’ I gasped, as she darted into my room. My little girl was shrouded in smoke, an acrid smell of burning hair filling the air. I couldn’t see any flames but Karla was clearly in terrible pain and I started screaming too. Then I heard a pounding on the door. It was Sharon, my neighbour, woken by the noise. As Sharon ran to Karla’s side, I grabbed my vest top from the radiator and drenched it in water. The front of my little girl’s hair had been burnt away completely, the wound so deep I could even see parts of her skull.
I gently held the vest against the red, raw skin and dialled 999. Sharon stayed behind with Katlyn and Callum as an ambulance arrived to take Karla and me to the Royal Alexandra Hospital in Paisley.
At the hospital, Karla was given morphine. ‘She’s got second and third degree burns to her scalp,’ a surgeon said. ‘We need to remove the damaged skin.’ I nodded, too shocked to speak. How badly scarred would my little girl be? As Karla was wheeled to theatre, I rang Sharon to check on the other two. ‘I don’t understand what happened,’ I said. There was a long pause…
‘I found matches and one of your candles down the side of the sofa,’ Sharon said.
I’d always loved scented candles but the kids had been
‘I saw her shrouded in smoke’
brought up knowing not to touch them, and I always kept the matches or a lighter up on the window ledge, well out of their reach. Now it dawned on me that Karla must have grabbed them down. But why?
So confident
Before I had the chance to think, the doctor appeared with news of Karla. ‘The burns are deep,’ he said. ‘She’ll need a skin graft.’ I gulped, horrified. Then he said Karla had told him what had happened. ‘She wanted to practise blowing out her birthday candles,’ he said. Suddenly I pictured it all. Karla trying to light one of my candles, the match flame catching her hair…
‘Oh, no,’ I whispered, shocked. Hurrying to Karla’s bedside, I sank down beside her. She was still woozy from the pain relief. ‘I’m sorry, Mummy,’ she said. But I clasped her hand. I was the one who should be sorry. It had been my candle that had caused all this.
‘Just you get better,’ I said, kissing her gently.
Once Karla was asleep, I went home and threw away every candle in the house. I never wanted to put my family at risk again.
Three days later, Karla had a five-hour operation to remove skin from her thigh to graft on to her head. Afterwards, she was swathed in bandages. It was such a shock to see her like that. ‘But you’ll be better soon,’ I said.
Karla finally came home five days before her birthday. There was one rule though. ‘It’s vital that she wears the compression bandage,’ her consultant explained. ‘It needs to be on day and night for 18 months.’ Poor girl, it covered her whole head, just her face peeking through. I expected tears and tantrums but Karla understood.
Then, on her birthday, I gave her a pink scooter and a doll. But when the time came for her cake – the moment she’d been waiting for – I couldn’t bear the thought of candles so I used a batteryoperated light-up sparkly diamond instead. Karla gazed at the pretty pink cake. ‘Now it won’t hurt me,’ she said.
Just eight weeks later Karla was due to start school for the first time. I was worried what her new classmates would say, seeing her head covered in a huge bandage, but Karla was used to wearing it by now. Seeing her so confident meant no one else was bothered by it either.
Over the next months she had follow-up hospital appointments and she also made friends with children at a local charity, the Scottish Burned Children’s Club. Some had been injured by fireworks, others by matches. It helped Karla not feel so alone to see other children with scars like hers.
After 10 months, the doctors said Karla’s skin was healing so well they could remove the bandage earlier than expected. She’d been left with a three-inch bald patch that we called her ‘brave mark’. At first Karla wasn’t bothered by it. But, as the years passed, it was clear the follicles had been permanently damaged as no hair was growing on that spot. Then one afternoon, Karla was combing her doll’s long hair looking sad. ‘I want my hair back, Mummy,’ she said.
Her doctor suggested inserting a balloon under a healthy area of her scalp to stretch the skin. The new stretched skin with hair follicles would be repositioned over the scarred area.
‘I want my hair back, Mummy’
A warning
It was drastic but in June 2012, Karla, now 11, went under the knife again. The balloon was put in place and every few days gently inflated with fluid. By August there was enough new skin for surgeons to operate. We were amazed by the results. It was almost impossible to tell it wasn’t her original hair. Unfortunately though, for Karla, she’s still in a lot of pain. She’s also terrified by candles. It’s why I want to warn other mums to keep matches and lighters locked away. I thought mine were out of reach but I was so wrong. If Karla hadn’t seen them, she would never have tried to blow out her ‘birthday’ candle. Our family has learnt the hard way. Many little ones love watching pretty flames and don’t realise how dangerous they can be. All I hope is that by telling our story I can help stop any other child getting hurt.