The Hot Water Bottle Warning Every Parent Needs

Hello, hello. This is my weekend community catch-up, and this time it's completely different to my normal one. I'm gonna give you a warning, and I really want you to share it, so stay with me and please send this to anyone to spread the word. It's now just over a week since my beloved Phoebe suffered horrific burns from a hot water bottle at burst. I'm not talking about mere scalding. She had to be admitted to a burns unit for intensive care for two days. And instead of going back to university that she was so excited about, she's now stuck at home celebrating her 20th birthday, bedbound, being nursed by me. So how did this happen? Well, I was away on a short hiking trip with my girlfriends. She filled up a cute little bottle she's had for some time that says disco nap on the lovely fleece cover, and off she went upstairs. Our house isn't a very warm house, and I know a lot of people are like us trying to save on heating bills with the current cost of energy, so they're digging out their hot water bottles. I used a hot water bottle my entire childhood and young adulthood, and nothing bad ever happened to me. With this bottle, she was holding it to her stomach when it suddenly split down the seams and spilt its entire contents all over her stomach, upper thighs, and groin. Thankfully, when my husband found her, he put her straight in a bath of cold water where he kept the poor girl for twenty minutes. She couldn't do more because of the danger of hypothermia. He then took her to the emergency room where she was seen immediately because she was clearly in shock and in terrible pain. But here's the thing about burns. People who aren't trained in them don't understand how best to treat them. The nurse there gave her morphine, dressed some of the burns, didn't touch others, and then sent her home, told her to take paracetamol and to contact her doctor in three days to get the dressing changed. Now I don't blame her. Our AE departments are absolutely overwhelmed and it's a bit like Battlefield First Aid. The thing is, that's no good. I only found out about all of this the following morning. I suffered burns to my arm as a teenager when I was working in a fish and chip shop and my arm slipped into a vat of hot oil. So I knew that what she experienced needed much better treatment. I insisted she go to a specialist burns unit, and we happened to have the most amazing place near to us that was originally created to treat pilots whose cockpits had been set on fire during World War II. Big shout out to the Queen Victoria Hospital. The nurses there are actual angels and I've arranged a big donation. They admitted her for intensive burn care and kept her in for two days, giving her morphine and de briding, which is like scraping off the dead skin. Oh, and this reduces infection, it helps healing, but oh my goodness, it's unbelievably painful for the patient. But you know, these nurses were just so kind to her and so loving, and she felt so cared for because they wouldn't even let me in to start with during these procedures because I think they're just too traumatic. Anyway, the first two weeks after a burn are critical for knowing whether it needs a skin graft, so we're doing everything we can to help her heal. Thankfully, she has a super healthy diet. We can afford that. She's never smoked or vaped because they won't give you a skin graft if you use nicotine. You need to know that because it won't take. And it seriously slows down healing. Phoebe is amazing. I nearly fainted the first time I went through the dressings change with her. It is so gruesome. Um, she just said, I'm so grateful I won the life lottery. I wasn't born somewhere like the Yemen where I couldn't get this incredible treatment for free. I'm surrounded by amazing nurses, loving family who can care for me round the clock, and I don't had to do anything but get better. So that's one thing. She's really grateful. Um, Oxford, by the way, has been amazing. They're so understanding. And it was hard for her because that first week it was impossible for her to even stay awake for long, think straight. I think it's both a morphine and also that her body was using so much energy to tackle the trauma that she couldn't focus on anything else. I told her that the most important thing is sleep, hydration, protein to help rebuild the skin tissue, stop worrying about her studies. And I don't know what it's like where you are, but in the UK, there's almost no information about the importance of changing your hot water bottle regularly. And I think that's obscene given the rise in hot water bottle injuries. I've looked on tons of websites and none of them warn about these issues where they're selling the bottles. Um, I've had so many messages from people either saying they've experienced terrific burns or that they've got an old hot water bottle or dozens of old hot water bottles that they've never thrown out and they're still using them, still pouring boiling water into them. Um a lot of women use them to cope with pain and discomfort they experience during their monthly cycles, so I totally understand it. And my message is try using a wheat or a rice bag that you heat up in a microwave if you can. If you still want to use a hot water bottle, and I fully understand its benefit in pain management, never pour boiling water into it. You need to leave that water for five minutes to cool. Always throw out your bottle two years after its date of manufacture. Now, in the UK, I don't know what it's like everywhere else, but you can find that date printed on the bottle in what looks like a it's a bit like a daisy. I think every bottle should be sold with a swing tag that can only be removed on purchase, warning us to throw it away after two years after manufacture and never to pour in boiling water. I hope this saves some people the same fate. I'm just grateful that Phoebe is young, she was very fit when this happened, and she's healthy, and hopefully the scarring will be minimal. Look after yourselves, please pass on the message. Big hug, bye-bye for now.