NBASA Ambassador (Eastern Cape)

I remember being a little girl roughly about age 4 travelling from Ocean View to Red Cross Children’s Hospital with my mom who faithfully journeyed with me to have my scars improved. This is when the actual nightmare began. Looking strange to many left me very shy and embarrassed as everywhere I went I had people staring. From the youngest of kids to the eldest of adults. This made me very inferior and withdrawn from what should have been a natural childhood. Attending hospital was always such a long procedure…From waiting for a folder to getting to see the doctor and for them to case study on me as if I was a lab rat. From skin graphs, to pressure garments, to operation after operation and then occupational therapy too…This was draining and so so demanding. I remember when I had tissue expanders to improve scarring. The time frame of expanding the balloons they put in your skin and then going every week to fill it with saline to stretch the skin was the worst and so painful for the first 2- 3 days after adding saline. I remember a time when I was so used to having the tissue expanders inflated that after Dr. Bloch head of plastics at my time inserted the butterfly needle I could literally inflate my own saline. This gave me a small sense of being able to help with all my trauma.