MeatyREADS

Burn

September 20, 2008 – 3:28 pm by BH

This morning came news that Travis Barker and Adam Goldstein (aka DJ AM) were burned in a horrible plane accident. The other passengers and the crew were killed (LAT). Perhaps not surprising given that these were both celebrities, sites like TMZ were much faster to cover the story and to include pictures and other multimedia. Eventually the msm got around to the story, but it is remarkable how much faster specialist sites are for this type of thing.

On a more serious note, both Barker and Goldstein face a tough road ahead. Dan Ariely, author of Predictibly Irrational, was a burn victim and wrote a painful article about the incident and the healing process. I guess now would be as good a time as any to read this piece, though it is painful to read at any time. An excerpt (pdf):

It was a large, full-size mirror. I got closer and closer and finally turned and looked at myself. Legs bent and thickly covered in bandages; back completely bent forward; arms collapsed sideways and bandaged. My whole body was twisted and looked foreign and detached from what I felt was me. Still, the worst was my face. The whole right side was open flesh, yellow and red with all kind of pieces of flash and skin hanging from it. It looked as if it was made out of colorful wax and it was in the process of melting. Eyes were pulled severely to the side. The right side of my mouth, ear, and my nose were charred and distorted.

It was hard to grasp the details. I just stood there and tried to take in the whole new me. Was the old me still there in the image that looked at me from the mirror? The only thing I could recognize was my left eye gazing at me from the mirror – placed in this different and foreign body that didn’t look anything like me. During the treatments I saw parts of my body so I knew how some of the scars looked like. I was also told that the right side of my face was badly burned but, somehow, until this moment the connection was not real. I wanted to stay and stare at myself and yet I wanted to turn away and not look any more. Soon enough the pain in my legs made the decision for me and I went back to my room. Was this really me? It was, yet it was hard to see, believe. Or accept that this was the new me.

The following story describes in some detail my experiences as a burn patient. On what would have otherwise have been a normal Friday afternoon, my life changed irreversibly in a matter of a few seconds. In an instant, my future hopes and dreams slipped away, to be replaced by a long struggle toward recovery. On that day, an explosion left me with 70 percent of my body covered with third degree burns. These mere few seconds that forever changed my life marked the starting point of a long and painful period of hospitalization. For the three years that were to follow, I faced not only, hospitalization and pain but emotional turbulence as well.

Read the rest. My thoughts and sympathies are with Barker and Goldstein and their families.