Homemade Doughnuts

"Scars are the stories that tell everyone who, and why, you are. Some scars may have a negative memory; some the most joyous. But each, good or bad, tells us that we were more than just present - we lived. And isn't that the purpose of life?" ~Anonymous

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Today, I'm sharing a story with you that not very many know. I'm sharing pictures with you that no one except my family has seen. I'm sharing a memory, a part of my life, that changed me forever. Today is a different anniversary of sorts...

May 4, 1995

I was almost finished with my freshman year of high school. I was young. I was naive. I was am stubborn (what red-head isn't?). And I was home alone.

My parents drove to El Dorado for the afternoon to watch my brother's track meet. I had told my mom earlier that I wanted to make homemade doughnuts for a snack. But, I was given explicit instructions not to make them while my parents were away. My mom didn't want me cooking with hot grease while I was by myself.

I decided that as a 15-year-old, I didn't need to heed any of my parents' advice, so when my mom told me not to cook anything, I moped around and said, "Okay," but after they left, I knew I was going to have my doughnuts.

You have to understand, my mom's homemade cinnamon sugar doughnuts are a treasure. I want need them. Like, all the time. And like I said, I am a stubborn creature.

So after my parents left, I began gathering the necessary equipment to make my treats. I found the oil. I got all of the dough ingredients out. And I looked up and down the kitchen for the Fry Daddy. I found it, but the lid was missing.

I can't make doughnuts in the Fry Daddy if the lid is missing!!!

So instead, I got out my mom's huge dutch oven pot and lid. Perfect.

I poured the oil in and turned the heat on. Hmmm... how hot should I make it? The pot didn't have a temperature gauge like the Fry Daddy. So, I guessed.

While the oil was heating, I made the doughnuts. When the oil looked hot enough, I carefully put the balls of dough into the pot. After a few seconds, I knew the oil was too hot. Things were smoking and smelling and burning. I turned the stove off and moved the pot to another burner to cool. I carefully removed the doughnuts from the oil and put them on a paper towel. Then, I surveyed my work.

Not my best attempt, I have to admit. The doughnuts were black on the outside and raw in the middle.

Fudge.

I threw the doughnuts in the trash and continued to allow the oil to cool. I was waiting for it to cool enough for me to pour it in the grease trap my parents kept under the kitchen sink.

I guessed again when I thought the oil was cool enough to dispose of (because I had been doing so well at guessing already). I got the grease can out and wrapped my left arm around it, cradling it against my left side. With my right hand and side, I carefully scooted the pot of oil to the edge of the stove, where I could similarly hold it and pour everything into the trap.

All was well and good until the trap started to get warm. Very warm. I needed to sit it down. And as I was getting ready to sit it down, a small amount of oil splashed out and hit my left hand/wrist. This, of course, scared the poo out of me, causing me to jump. And upon said jump, the grease trap in my left hand dumped upside down all over my right hand. Then, the pot in my right hand fell to the linoleum floor, spilling grease everywhere.

For a second, I freaked out. I think I screamed a little.

Then, some force I can't explain came over me and I was calm. I knew everything I needed to do. I quickly put my parents' dogs (and my grandparents' dogs that we were puppy-sitting) outside in the back yard so they wouldn't get into the spilled grease. Then, I made my way back through the kitchen (by this time, the hot grease had turned into a slippery, mushy, jelly-like substance all over the floor) and to the bathroom. I took all of my clothes off except for my bra and underwear. I got into the bathtub and started immersing myself in cold water.

I looked down at my hands as skin was blistering and popping and falling off into the tub. There was a small burn on my left leg, and also a small patch on my stomach. My hands were the worst.

And the pain. I can't even describe to you the pain. It's something I can't put into words, yet I'll never forget it.

I'm not sure how long I was in the bathtub before I realized that I no longer could do this on my own and I needed to call for help. I got out of the tub, went back into the kitchen where our phone was, and called 911. While I was on the phone with the dispatcher, I continued to run water over my hands under the kitchen sink. After the dispatcher got all of my information, she told me to unlock the front door, then go back to the bathroom and get back in the tub.

I did all of this, and within a few minutes, I had two policemen entering my home. Soon after, the EMS was there. They helped me out of the tub and wrapped a towel around me. They took me out the front door to a gurney waiting for me on the driveway. When I got outside, I think the severity of my situation finally hit me. There were three police cars and two ambulances in front of my house. Granted, I live in a small town where this was probably the most excitement anyone had seen for a good long while, but still...

And then there were all of my neighbors, standing in front of their houses, wondering what the heck was going on. Yay, I get to show the entire block my bra and panties...

I was loaded into one of the ambulances, where my special friend Beth was waiting to take care of me. They hooked me up to all the gadgets, and Beth started pouring water on my burns. She told me to tell her when it started burning, and she would pour on more water.

She didn't tell me at the time how bad she knew it was when I only asked for water on my left hand and leg. I couldn't even feel my right hand. And all the way to the hospital, I kept telling her that we needed to call my friend Melissa. Over and over, I just kept saying, "Melissa is going to be so worried. We need to call her and tell her what happened. She is going to be so worried."

It's safe to say I was in shock at that point. And in fear. Fear of what was going to happen to me. And fear of what my parents were going to say.

Meanwhile, the officers were trying to get a hold of my parents at the track stadium in El Dorado to tell them what had happened. They were paged and paged, but no answer. Turns out, they had already left. I'm not quite clear on how my parents found out about me (I think maybe they had gotten home shortly after I had left), but I do know that they beat the ambulance to the hospital.

Go Dad!

I can't even imagine what they were thinking. Part of me doesn't even want to know.

I was taken to St. Francis and wheeled into an ER room, where my parents found me a short time later. The nurses moved me to a regular bed and started to clean my wounds.

With warm, soapy water.

And a rag that felt like it was made of sandpaper.

Horror. Pure horror.

They cleaned the burns and removed the remaining excess skin that was dangling from my limbs. Then, they dressed everything. I wasn't allowed any pain meds until the doctors could assess how bad my injuries were.

After all was said and done, I was moved to a space in the burn unit. In there with me was a man who had head-to-toe burns from a chemical explosion at his job, and a 2-year-old girl, who also had head-to-toe burns, but I can't remember what happened to her. All I really remember about her was that the nurses always pulled her around in a wagon while she just laid there.

Very sad.

That night, we found out I was allergic to pretty much all narcotics. Morphine made me throw up. Demerol gave me hives. The pain from the burns was bad enough, but having a rash on top of everything while throwing up in a bucket was the cherry on top of the most vile cake ever eaten. This was, without a doubt, the worst night of my life.

But my mom was with me the entire time.

The next day was slightly better. The nurses got the rash under control, but they continued to give me narcotics, just in lower doses. They kept having to move my IV because I would have reactions in the IV spot. I even had an IV in my foot at one point. During my week's stay, I had a total of seven IVs, as well as a narcotics patch, which, after removed, unveiled another rash underneath.

I was quite the case.

I did spend a week in the hospital. This included surgery and recovery time for a skin graft, where my doctor took a thin layer of skin from my right leg/hip area and attached it to my right hand/wrist. I learned that I had severe 3rd/4th degree burns on my right hand. All of the nerves and tissue were dead. On my left hand, I had severe 2nd degree burns. The doctors were able to put pigskin (yes, pigskin) on my left hand, as well as my left leg and stomach, to cover the burned area and allow my regular skin to heal underneath.

Quite the innovation. When the skin underneath was healed, the pigskin slowly pealed off until it was all gone and only my skin remained.

I don't really remember much about my stay in the hospital, mainly because I was high from the narcotics, but also because of the trauma I had sustained. I do remember bits and pieces of things, like a few of my friends visiting me and bringing me cards and things that people at school had signed. My friend, Sara, says she came to visit me one time (that I don't recall), and said I just stared through her and at the TV like a possessed person. I remember the TV always having "Murder, She Wrote" on, because my mom really liked that show and she watched it whenever she was staying with me. I remember a few deliveries of flowers and stuffed animals and balloons, and even a muffin basket from my dad's company. I remember my grandparents cutting their KC trip short when they heard about my accident, and driving all the way back to Wichita to see me. They brought me a huge stuffed Energizer Bunny, drum and all. I remember my friend, Shannon, giving me a stuffed gorilla. I named it Dr. Jost, after my surgeon, because he was grumpy and had absolutely no bedside manner. I thought that might be what gorillas were like.

I remember the day I had to get the staples out of the dressing on my leg. The dressing, called "Scarlet Red" because the medication in it was bright red, was placed over the graft sight on my right leg. It was stapled into my leg until it could securely adhere to my skin.

Then the staples were removed. I made it through one staple before I passed out from the pain. When I woke up, the staples were all out, but I was sore from having my muscles tense up so much.

The rest of the week was spent with me trying to go to the bathroom without a catheter, walk without assistance (my graft site and the Scarlet Red made walking very difficult), and learning how to brush my hair and teeth with huge bandages on my hands. The morning of my release, I had a full-blown panic attack because I didn't want to go home. Going home meant I would no longer have nurses caring for me and doing things for me. It meant I would have to do some things on my own. And those were scary thoughts to have. I had a "mean" nurse those last couple of days who "made" me brush my teeth and get dressed myself. I put "mean" and "made" in quotations because that was my perspective. I'm sure she was a really nice person who did her best to care for me.

But I am a stubborn person. I didn't think I was ready to go home yet. That nurse thought otherwise and made me prove it. I ended up going home doped up on Valium because I worked myself up into a panic attack. Sweating, shortness of breath, dizziness. I had it all.

Then I got home and I was much better. It felt so good to sleep in my own bed. After I settled in, I learned that I could not go back to school for the remainder of the year. The district was so kind and understanding. I was given my grades at the time of my accident as my "final" grades for the semester. I did not have to take any finals.

The months following my accident were no picnic. I had physical therapy three times a week at first, then twice a week, then once a week. This went on for a year and a half. At first, I thought I was going to die. If the burns didn't kill me, the therapy sure was going to. I had this special lotion I had to put on to help minimize scarring. I also had to wear compression gloves, at first on both hands, then just on my right hand. I had to learn how to write and do other things with my left hand. I had special range-of-motion exercises I had to do every day.

The doctor thought it would take me 10-12 months before I got my full range of motion back in my right wrist. But, I am a stubborn person. I wanted to be DONE with therapy. So, I set out to prove him wrong. Within two months, I was back at cheer practice. I couldn't stunt or anything, but I went to learn the dance moves for our camp routine, and I went to provide moral support to the rest of my squad. I went to camp, compression gloves and all, and I did all the routines. I went back to work teaching gymnastics within 3 months. Within 8 months, I had full range of motion back!

I can't really describe to you what my attitude was like during this whole ordeal. Some days, I was okay, and other days, I was really depressed. I gained weight in the few months after the accident, then went through a period that I would describe as "mild anorexia." I suffered emotionally and physically. I wasn't really at a point in my faith journey where I knew for sure what I wanted to believe. But, I had lots of friends and family who were, and they prayed constantly for me. My mom was probably my biggest prayer warrior. I can say that I usually felt the worst when people would stare at my scars or make weird faces. I know people talked behind my back, too. Gossip is always present, it seems.

And the grease smell. To this day, the smell of hot grease makes me queasy. I will tell you that it took me several weeks before I even set foot in my parents' kitchen again. And several months before I even made so much as a sandwich.

I learned that we had the best neighbors. While we were all at the hospital that first night, a few of them went over and cleaned up the entire mess in the kitchen. There was a large circular burn in the linoleum from the dutch oven. It haunted me until my parents decided to carpet the kitchen floor. 

May 4, 2015 (20 years later)

Today is the 20th anniversary of my accident. Wow. 20 years. I almost can't believe it's been that long.

It took me a long time to get to a point where my scars didn't bother me. I hid them as much as I could. I didn't like people staring or asking questions. I just wanted to forget the whole thing ever happened, but I couldn't. I had a 24/7 permanent reminder. I think I was in college before I reached the point where my scars didn't bother me anymore. Before that, I had a really difficult time accepting myself and my scars. It was a hard pill to swallow knowing that I did this to myself, and it could all have been prevented had I listened to my mom from the get-go.

Hindsight... always 20/20...

Today, my scars are barely visible. Actually, you can't even tell on my left hand where I was burned. You can still see the scar on my right hand. That will probably never go away. It turns blue-ish purple when I'm cold, and bright pink when I'm really hot. I still don't really have any nerves in my hand, so I can't really feel anything except pressure. It's a strange feeling. But I'm used to it now. Also, there is a very faint reminder on my right hip of where that damn Scarlet Red was stapled on.

Little by little, I'm healing from this, but I will always have my scars (external and internal). I'm trying to think of what the overall moral of this story is. The only thing I can really say is:

Obey your parents.

People, when they tell you not to do something, don't do it. They know things, as much as we hate to admit it sometimes. They've lived longer lives. They've been there, done that. They're smart creatures, these parents of ours.

But the good news is that when we do mess up, their love and grace will be there waiting for us. They're like God's servants, sent to guide and protect us. And forgive us when we do stupid things.

Because we all have a little stubborn in us...

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Here are some pictures of my accident, then and now...

Here's my friend, Melissa, that I mentioned in my story. We are still friends to this day. She had come to visit right after my mom had washed my hair for me and put it into two braids. Note the stoned face...

Me and Mel

I think Mel was telling me all about school happenings. I really missed being away from school and my friends and cheerleading.

Here's a good shot of all my ouchies. The burn on my left hand and leg, and then the skin graft on my right hand with the Scarlet Red on my leg. If you look closely at the smaller burns, you can see the pigskin. The only burn you can't see is the one on my stomach.

This was the day I came home from the hospital. "Dr. Jost" is second from the left on the top of the couch.

Joel has always given me a hard time for being somewhat of a "pack rat." I still have an entire box full of cards, banners, notes and memorabilia from my time in the hospital and subsequent recovery. So much love...

I still have Dr. Jost!!!

My skin graft today...