The burns
At the end of November, after a lovely Thursday out with my mum, I was settling down for bed, doom-scrolling, hugging my bottle to my chest. As I went to roll over, the bottle split and the hot water burst over me, covering my chest and arm.
Man, am I glad I was still awake.
I ran straight from bed to the shower, and stood there under cold water for maybe 10 minutes, balancing cooling the burns with avoiding reducing my core body temperature too much. It hurt so much that I spent the next hour just lying on the bed, under a wet, cold towel, just crying. I’ve had little burns before – from the oven, a too-hot panhandle, mugs from the microwave – but this felt so so much worse.
Because of burns I’d had before, and successfully managed with first aid, I naively felt that I would be able to deal with the burns myself. Therefore I wrapped my chest and arm in clingfilm, and decided the best thing to do now would just be to get to sleep. It took a while to get off to sleep, but in the morning the intense burning had stopped and I felt a lot better.
Phew… not too bad, I thought.