Ammie Reddick from East Kilbride, Lanarkshire, was only 18 months old when she had the accident that had scarred(留下创伤) her for life. The curious child reached up to grab the wire of a hot kettle in the family kitchen and poured boiling water over her tiny infant frame.
Her mother Ruby turned round and, seeing Ammie horribly burnt, called an ambulance which rushed her daughter to a nearby hospital. Twenty percent of Ammie’s body had been burned and all of her burns were third-degree. There, using tissue taken from unburned areas of Ammie’s body, surgeons(外科医生)performed complex skin grafts(移植) to close her wounds and control her injuries, an operation that took about six hours. Over the next 16 years, Ammie underwent 12 more operations to repair her body.
When she started school at Maxwelton Primary at age 4, other pupils made cruel comments or simply wouldn’t play with her. “ I was the only burned child in the street, the class and the school,” she recalled, “some children refused to become friends because of that.”
Today, age 17, Ammie can only ever remember being a burned person with scars; pain is a permanent part of her body. She still has to have two further skin grafts. Yet she is a confident, outgoing teenager who offers inspiration and hope to other young burns victims.
She is a member of the Scottish Burned Chindren’s Club, a charity set up last year. This month, Ammie will be joining the younger children at the Graffham Water Center in Cambridgeshire for the charity’s first summer camp. “I’ll show them how to shrug off unkind stares from others,” she says. Ammie loves wearing fashionable sleeveless tops, and she plans to show the youngsters at the summer camp that they can too. “I do not go to great lengths to hide my burns scars,” she says, “I gave up wondering how other people would react years ago.”