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Emotional trauma the hardest, says burn survivor

Burn Camp helps young survivors wear their scars as ‘badges of honour’

Barbara Monteith is a survivor. But it hasn’t been an easy journey to get to where she is today.

“I hope to never hear that blood-curdling sound come out of my body again,” the Langford resident said. “I was making coffee one morning, I reached across the the stove to turn the element off and my sleeve caught on fire.”

But the house coat she was wearing was wrapped tightly around her and she couldn’t get it off. Dropping and rolling also wasn’t an option in the small galley kitchen.

“Every little move I made, made it worse,” she recalled of the 2011 accident, which happened when she lived on the mainland. “I had to stand there and take it.”

Monteith’s boyfriend heard her screams and came running to help.

She suffered second- and third-degree burns to her right hand and arm and spent four days in hospital. While she was prepped for surgery twice, she didn’t need to undergo skin grafts. “I got lucky on a few things,” she said. “The physical recovering, I’m good at that … but I ignored the emotional.”

After a year in compression and countless bandages later, she thought her wounds were healing. But it was not a happy time in her life with other emotional traumas pilling on and a vertigo problem that developed after the fire. In the end, it cost her her career as she wasn’t able to continue working.

People would ask how she was doing, but the looks they gave her when she told them made her avoid the subject. “I just stopped telling my story and that’s not very helpful,” she added.

That’s when Monteith decided to attend a burn survivors meeting. As a high school counsellor by profession, she decided to go, thinking she could help others with her training. But she still didn’t understand the toll the fire had taken on her.

“I was so in denial … I struggled a long time and I still do,” she explained. “For me the emotional trauma was the worst.”

Looking back at her battle with post-traumatic stress disorder, Monteith said she was depressed for two years, suffered panic attacks and didn’t recognize the person she had become.

“I just couldn’t settle my nervous system … It’s like your body betrays you,” she said, adding stimuli in the city can still overwhelm her system. She decided to uproot her life and move away from the mainland, landing in Langford.

Now as she continues on her road to recovery she hopes to raise awareness about the emotional impacts burn can have on survivors and help others with their recovery.

RELATED: B.C. woman praises Burn Fund after boat explosion in 1978

Helping burn victims get the specialized emotional and physical support they need is a part of how proceeds from the annual Hometown Heroes Lottery assist British Columbians. nd the proceeds also help the comes in, to help with moving from surviving to thriving. Tickets are on sale now until July 12 with approximately 3,000 prizes worth more than $3.2 million including luxury homes, vacations and cars. Proceeds from ticket sales go to specialized adult health services and research for British Columbians.

“It doesn’t sound like much but they mean a lot,” Monteith said, adding those supports are crucial for recovery as it can be a long, expensive journey.

Some of those funds go to the B.C. Professional Fire Fighters’ Association Burn Fund, which is where Victoria firefighter Kirk Corby comes in. Celebrating its 40th anniversary this year, the Burn Fund was established in 1978 and provides life saving supports and enriching services to British Columbians.

He sits on the board of directors and has been volunteering with the Burn Fund for 13 of his 15 years as a professional firefighter. He began by helping out at Bright Nights in Stanley Park, the Burn Fund’s other major fundraiser, but quickly found his passion working with young survivors at Burn Camp.

Burn Camp is a week-long summer camp, celebrating its 25th anniversary this year, for roughly 70 campers ranging in age from six to 18. It’s free to attend for the children and youth, with the Burn Fund covering the roughly $3,000 cost per camper of travel, accommodation and camp operations.

During his first year Corby was assigned two of the youngest campers, one of whom couldn’t wait to go swimming. But when pool day finally arrived, Corby noticed the boy’s enthusiasm falter. “He was dragging his feet looking for his sun shirt,” Corby remembered, but hustled him out the door anyways.

When they arrived at the pool it was chaos, filled with kids and floating toys. Amidst all of the noise, one fellow camper yelled to the boy and asked why he was wearing his sun shirt. As silence fell over the pool, Corby said, the little boy lifted his shirt to reveal burn scars on his tummy. He pointed to them and said, “nobody wants to see this.”

The roughly 30 kids in the pool stared back at the little boy and in unison yelled, “nobody cares here.”

“That kid took off his shirt and threw it over the fence,” Corby said with a smile – and that’s one of the reasons he goes back every year. “It’s very powerful for them to feel that sense of normalcy – everyone is like them. They wear their scars like a badge of honour, where in their school, they might not do that.”

The Burn Fund has other programs that support survivors of all ages, like Monteith, who, as part of her healing process, is raising awareness about the emotional impacts burns can have and helping others with their recovery.

For his part, Corby can see the impact the Burn Fund is having.

“I believe in it, I’m not going to stop.”

For more information visit burnfund.org or to learn more about the Hometown Heroes lottery, visit heroeslottery.com. Tickets are available until July 12.

editor@goldstreamgazette.com



Katherine Engqvist

About the Author: Katherine Engqvist

I took on the role of Bureau Chief when we created the Greater Victoria editorial hub in 2018.
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