This is a Peace Corps story so you have the added excitement of no reliable medical facilities and nothing at all like 911 (or even telephones for that matter). I was living in a little village called Nkar and I had to boil my water to make it safe for drinking. So I was in the process of boiling a big pot of water. It was probably a 2 or 3 gallon pot. The water was done and I was just lifting it off the fire to set by the window to cool when one of the handles broke off the pot. It was like one of those slow motion dream moments where you see it all in really sharp detail. It was horrible. The pot tilted to the right and I sort of jerked it up as the handle broke, causing boiling water to crash down on my right shoulder, dumping all over me. It covered my right arm first, and then splashed up and got the right side of my face and neck, my left arm, and feet. The force and suprise of the whole thing sent me crashing to the ground and I banged up my knees and chin quite nicely on the concrete floor.

Adrenaline immediately started racing through my system. I hadn't felt the pain yet, but I knew it was coming. I felt like a jackrabbit all hyped up or something. I got up and sprinted to my bedroom where I tore off all my clothes. Then I sprinted into the bathroom and started dumping cold water on my burns. The pain was just starting and I was really scared. I knew it was going to be bad. My skin felt so hot. I was mostly worried about the burns on my face and neck and about going into shock because there was no doctor and no way to get one. I ran back into the kitchen and grabbed some ice out of my small fridge. Ran back into the bedroom because I realized I was stark naked and all my windows were wide open. The pain was really setting in by this point and I made myself lay back on the bed and calm down. The only pain killers I had were ibuprofen. I took 4.

I started alternately soaking my right arm, left arm and face/neck in cold, wet rags. My skin was really red by this point and the pain was getting pretty intense. Oh God. Then I put on some shorts and a t-shirt and went into the parlor with a cold bucket of water and just continued soaking one body part at a time until the next part in the cycle got so painful I couldn't bear it any more and then I would soak that one for a while.

The pain just kept getting worse instead of better. 4 hours after it had happened, it hurt much more than 1 hour after it had happened. I was really starting to freak out. I remember sitting on my front porch and just crying (which being the ultra cool hero character that I am, rarely happens). I was getting desperate. By this time my neighbors had showed up and had various suggestions for pain relief. I tried honey, corn flour, and several other ideas with no effect. I stopped accepting suggestions when my houseboy wanted me to try salt. He was certain that would do it. After 6 hours of misery, the pain finally reached its peak and leveled off.

That night I didn't really sleep because no matter which way I lay, some burned part was touching the sheets and it was unbearable. So I tossed and turned. The next day I started looking really grotesque. The burned skin had liquified by this point and so I had no skin on about half my face and none on my neck at all. It was just raw, oozing flesh. My right arm was the worst. Mostly second degree burns, but with a patch of third degree at my wrist and some first degree as well. The third degree burn was black and the rest was a very bright red.

I did my best to keep everything very clean. Washing a lot and applying antibiotic cream. The doctor who I saw much later in the week said that's what saved me from a horrible infection. I had so many open wounds that would have been ideal hosts for some nasty little thing. So, I just continued with the soaking and stuff, I felt awful. I was really tired, couldn't sleep, couldn't go out, certainly couldn't survive a car voyage which would mean being crammed into some little Toyota with 7 other people. So I waited it out.

Finally, after 4 days I felt like I could manage a trip to the hospital. I bandaged everything up and headed out. I was still in a lot of pain and my face looked awful, but I don't think the trip was too bad. Got to the hospital and it was one of those situations where they brought in all the other doctors to take a look at me because I was such an interesting specimen. I had burned 7-10% of my body surface area, with mostly 2nd degree burns. They wanted to admit me but I wasn't having any of that. So they cleaned me up, applied fresh bandages, and gave me some real pain killers, with instructions that I was to come back the next day to have my bandages changed.

I crashed with another volunteer who lived in town and was pleased that he was properly impressed with with my injuries. They took a while to heal completely, a month or so, and I have some really nice scars on my right arm and chest. Fortunately my face healed up totally. I have a picture of me after 1 week of healing, I'll try to remember to put it up.