Page 8 - January 2021 BSTTW Community News

8 BSTTW COMMUNITY NEWS
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I could ride a horse or cycle into the
country. The records slowly brought home
to me the reality of what had happened. I
had another twenty-nine operations to go, I
must be in a mess.
The only thing I had to worry about was
pain. Everything hurt when I moved, when I
breathed my chest moved and the
bandages rubbed. I had to lay on my back
which was burnt, my front was burnt. I could
not lay without feeling pain. But I was not
miserable. For some reason I had not died,
I wonder why. I started to notice other
patients in the room. There were six of us.
To my left was Heintz who had been thrown
out of a flat by an explosion of industrial
carpet floor cleaning chemicals. He had
hung onto the balcony rail to stop himself
falling. His visitors were clad in surgical
gowns, shoes and hats just like the doctors
and nurses. One visitor showed me a
picture of Heintz before his accident, the
only way I could recognize him was by his
eyes and this did upset me. His face was
not the same. I then dawned on me that
Heintz had been very badly burned about
his face. I had seen him only as he was
after his accident, so not making a
comparison I could not say that he was
badly disfigured, but he was.
Over, a boy about twelve, was on the other
side of me. I had suffered his cries of pain
almost as much as he had. He had been
watching the trains on a bridge. The next
thing he knew he was in hospital. He had
fallen from the bridge onto high voltage
electricity cables, and from there onto the
track. He had lost a leg and suffered burns
to the middle part of his body. His ather had
to donate skin for grafting.
Mustafa, opposite, had about twenty
operations on his foot. He had been
working in a smelting factory when molten
metal was poured through his foot. The
repair work on his foot involved not only
skin grafts but bone grafts as well.
An Irish woman had heard that an English
speaking patient was in the hospital and
she sought me out. I told her about my
accident. She had been involved in a bad
car accident and almost every bone in her
body had been broken. She had lots of
bone graft operations and was going home
soon after spending a year in the hospital.
The other patients in the room were not well
enough to talk. In the room next to me was
an elderly patient who had been badly
burnt. I did not know the details but a nurse
told me he had been in intensive care here
for two years and died several days ago.
Even though I was covered in bandages I
was still expected to do physiotherapy. The
nurse was friendly enough, until she
expected me to move my arms about. I am
a realist now. That was important,
otherwise my joints would go solid and I
would not be able to bend my arms at all. It
did hurt. The bandages scraped raw skin as
I moved my arms up and down, bent my
elbows and moved my fingers. I always
shouted "Oh no, no, not you, not again",
whenever I saw her, but she new that I
knew I must "bewegen", which is move in
German.
The Second Operation
My eyesight was less cloudy and I felt that
maybe I was getting better. Then I was told
I would soon be ready for the second
operation; more grafts to my legs. The skin
on my legs had been burnt to within one
millimeter of the bone and a lot of work
needed to be done if I was not to lose them.
Well I've made it this far I thought, what's
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