I am married with three lovely children (6, 4, 20m). On the first day of the summer holidays I was preparing a barbecue on one side of the house whilst my husband was trying to light a bonfire on the other. He was looking after the baby or was toddling around the courtyard with her dolls pushchair. The older children wer inside watching t.v.
I heard shouting and then my eldest calling on me. I went round to find the bonfire out of control and my daughter's pushchair at the base of it. I went inside to find my husband sobbing and the skin hanging off his hands and arms. My daughter was in the bath screaming. What I thought were her clothes hanging off her was her skin. The ambulance took forever. My daughter was taken first to a hospital 25 min away and my husband to another. She was intially asessed as having 70 % burns. They battled to stabilise her, no one would answer my question ' will she be alright'? She was stablised, ventilated and transferred to a specialist burnes unit in Essex. She spent 32 days in intensive care, underwent 7 operations, survived 2 bouts of pneumonia, partial lung collapse, GI failure, metabolic instability. It was a roller coaster. The first two weeks were critical and she was extremely poorly. Numerous heart breaking conversations were had - I can't descibe the pain of those weeks. My husband was at the same hospital wit 15 % burns.
Once she turned the corner her progress has been fantastic. She has grafts to her face, hands, tummy, legs and large scars all over. Three times a day I have to cream and masage her, apply silicon gels and dressings, and then put on pressure garments (tight mask, gloves, leggings and body suit) that make her look like a super hero). She is extremely itchy and takes 5 drugs for this but still doesn't sleep well and scratches constantly. It wakes about 3/4 hr to do it properly. She develped blood clots so needs twice daily injections of a type of warfarin that I administer. My husband can't help and his hands are slow to heal (he had grafts up to hs elbows) and he has limited movement and pain in his hands.
So - my life is crap! My beautiful bay girls is scarred and uncomfortable (although copes remarkably well). I constantyl have to go through her massaing routine which she is becoming more tolerant of but is staill ahrd. The worst bi is puting on the gloves. She runs to my husband after I have doen the crap bit. We are back and forward to hospital (2 hr each way) once or twice a week. My poor boys have to play second fiddle all the time and I barely saw them throughout the summer. They are wonderfult o ehr though and super protective. Everywhere we go we are stared out and nudged (she wears a pink balaclava, the opressure garment).
However all this will improve as her scars mature (moths/years rather than weeks).
But here's the crux of it. Will I lose my marriage as well? My husband left a bottle of petrol, in a vegtable oil container, about 10 ft away from the bonfire, whilst in charge of a toddler. I don't know whether she picked it up but it was this that exploded. I have berated him 101 times about using petrol on bonfires, also on putting petrol (or any chemical) in stupid containers. He would give his life to turn the clock back and it was an accident. However it was a completely avoidable accident that I hold him 100% responsible for. He is a broken man but as time goes on I am finidng it harder to forgive rather than easier. What are my other options? A single mum working full time with three small children, one of whom needs an awful lot of care? I just don't know.
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So here's my story - read it and weep (you have been warned)
BulletProofMum · 10/11/2011 11:15
So sorry to hear what you are going through, OP. This bit does make his behaviour even harder to understand:
About 10 years ago he chucked petrol on a bonfire during when we had friends over and the subsequent fire ball only narrowly missed a baby. 
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4c.
OP, I have thought about you much over the last few days, as many other MNers have.
A few raggedy bag thoughts.
Having nowhere near the horror you have had to face with your little girl, I do know what it is like to be in hospital for significant stays with your child, and to have to be hands on in long painful treatment. My DS has had huge bone surgery and we have had to move screws, for months, 1mm a day to move his cut bone further apart. It is absolutely exhausting. The emotional drain is non stop, and it drains you out. Also, the degree of detatchment needed separates you from yourself. You have to find a place in yourself to be 'hard' - to do the thing that is uncomfortable (euphemism) for your child. Your spontaneity goes because you have to keep check of so much. You don't know who you are.
This is my experience, and maybe you recognise a little of it.
Even without the dreadful complication of your DH's key mistake, you would be exhausted, emotionally wrung out, alienated from your own feelings.
One more thing. At the height of our own wrung-outness and desparation, DS had an accident, and his recovery was put back. DP blamed me - he was like a wild thing in his blame. It nearly made me leave him. And then someone (a MN-er) said to me that when people feel most out of control, blame gives them a way to feel in control. Your situation is wholly different, and there is no direct match, buut i thought it was a powerful perspective on our relationship with blame, and what it gives us.
For what it's worth OP, you have come this far and if you are wanting your marriage to survive, I think it will do. Wanting is the most important thing. But you may just not be ready to be able to do any more mending in your exhaustion and hardness at the moment. healing takes a long time for all of you - slowness and different stages doesn't mean it isn;t happening, or can't happen.
Your wanting your marriage to work is a wonderful affirmation of all that you are as a parent and a partner, and your dd and DH are very lucky.
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