Mum burst into flames
Francesca, Marisa and son George before the accident
Wednesday 24th October 2007
When you think of an Italian mama what comes to mind? A big, smiley woman, standing over a bubbling pan of pasta sauce? Well, I'm not ashamed to admit my 74-year-old mum, Francesca Ryder was all of these stereotypes and more.
Mum had skin the colour of olive oil, she still dyed her short hair dark brown and she smelt of her favourite perfume when she hugged me, which was a lot. In fact every time I visited her with my 35-year-old husband Paul and 2-year-old son, George, Mum practically bounced off the walls.
'Bellisma,' she'd cry, grabbing my face in her hands and kissing me. Then she'd turn to George.
'You're just like your Grandad,' she'd cry. 'Only more handsome.'
Ever after my dad George,72, died of heart failure nine years ago, Mum refused to let life slow her down.
'What I'm going to do?' she laughed, in her thick Italian accent, when I fretted about her taking the two and a half hour flight on her own. 'Lie down and wait to die?'
So why now, was I sitting behind my desk at my HR job, worried to bits about her? Mum was in St Mary's Hospital in Paddington, London having a routine operation done to remove tumours from her liver. It was no big deal. She'd got hepatitis C from a blood transfusion during a hysterectomy when I'd been a little girl. Then, three years ago, she'd developed tumours on her liver as a result of the hepatitis.
By feeding a laser into her right side to get to her liver, doctors had been able to cut away the tumours. Twice she'd had the op over the past three years. Now in June 2007 the tumours had grown back again and Mum was in having her third operation.
But this time it was different. Mum had changed over the past months. No more jokes and laughter. She was tired and thin. When I'd dropped her off at the hospital, I'd realised in shock that she looked every inch her 74 years. So while I waited for her to come out of surgery, a terrible feeling washed over me.
After work, I headed straight to the hospital. When I got to there, I was ushered into a relatives' room.
'There was a complication with your mum's surgery,' the surgeon said. 'We're not sure how it happened, but somehow the laser caught fire and your mum got burnt.'
'Caught fire?' I frowned, as if I was speaking a foreign language for the first
time.
'We reacted quickly and called the fire brigade,' he said.
Fire brigade!
'I-is Mum alive?' I stuttered eventually.
'Only just,' he nodded.
To make matters worse, they hadn't managed to remove the two tumours in Mum's liver before the fire started. They'd only cut away part of one.
Paul had to stay at home to look after George, but my brother John Ryder, 44, rushed over to the hospital. We didn't know how bad the burns were yet because the doctors were still treating Mum. How could this have happened?
When we finally got to see Mum, she looked awful. Her skin was grey and she was unconscious. She couldn't even breathe on her own. The sheet was pulled right up to her neck so there was no sign of any burns. We weren't allowed to touch her, so me and John cuddled each other as we stood at her bedside.
'We love you Mum,' I cried.
After five minutes, we were ushered out. The doctor explained that Mum had serious burns all over her stomach, chest and arms. I spent the next three days by her bedside before doctors decided that she needed to be treated at the burns unit at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital in South London.
Just before they took her down to the ambulance, Mum's eyes drifted open.
'Mum,' I cried. 'I'm here.'
She nodded weakly, then closed her eyes again.
It was a ray of hope.
At the burns unit, the doctor took me to one side.
'Your mother has third degree burns,' he explained. 'We need to do skin grafts.'
Mum's burns were so severe they were constantly leaking blood and fluid and the nurses had to change her dressings every half hour. She was awake but not talking the next day when her dressings were changed. I stood beside Mum's bed as she squeezed her eyes shut, gripped my hand and screamed in agony. I couldn't see any skin. It was all open wounds, red-raw and weeping. And the smell. Mum actually smelt of burning flesh.
She had her skin grafts done three days later. The surgeons took layers of skin from the tops of her thighs to attach to the areas on her body, chest and arms where the fire had burnt her skin away. I was a bundle of nerves while Mum was in surgery and her heart rate went mad while she was on the operating table, but the doctors got it under control. She was through the worst.
'It will look quite graphic,' the nurse warned the next afternoon, when she changed Mum's dressings.
'OK,' I gulped.
But no warning could have prepared me for what I was about to see. The bright red skin they'd taken from Mum's thighs had been placed over the burnt area, and stapled to her own skin with what looked like hundreds of little black staples. Blood and fluid oozed out. I ran to the loo and threw up.
Slowly Mum started coming round. And two weeks after her skin graft she spoke for the first time.
'I'm in so much pain,' she croaked.
I felt so sorry for her, and furious too. My kind, loving Mum didn't deserve to be suffering like this.
St Mary's NHS Trust announced they'd be conducting an investigation to find out why it had happened. Two months after the fire, Mum was discharged back to her flat, where she
had carers looking after her.
And five days on, in August 2007, John and I went to St Mary's NHS trust office in Paddington to hear the results of the investigation. First they explained that the laser had overheated and set fire to the sheet that had covered her. Mum hadn't just been burnt. She'd been on fire.
'We believe the machine's irrigation system wasn't on,' they said.
Irrigation system?
'What's that?' I asked.
'It's the cooling system for the laser,' they explained. 'We're not sure how it happened. We can only apologise.'
Four months on from the fire, Mum's a shadow of her old self. My lively independant Italian Mama is now a shaky, pain-riddled woman. Not only are her burns hurting, but also the tumours that the surgeon didn't manage to cut away before the fire started. They're getting bigger. Her doctor is going to try her on some medication to slow their growth, but if that doesn't work, she'll have to try laser surgery again.
'I'm terrified at the thought,' Mum says.
And you know what, so am I. Terrified that in this day and age a woman can catch fire and burn in an operating theatre. Sick, isn't it.
Check out these other stories of accidents from old issues of Pick Me Up:
Whatever happened to... Paul Montague who had Britain's biggest blood transfusion?
Mangled in a fish grinder while pregnant