Parkland’s RISE program brings together burn survivors

‘Support groups were the first time that I felt I fit in’

DALLAS – About every 20 minutes in Texas, someone is hurt or killed in a vehicular crash involving alcohol, according to the Texas Department of Transportation website. While many DUIs involve college students, news accounts show that people of all ages and walks of life – from pastors and priests to politicians and PTA members – are cited for driving while intoxicated.

Cindy Grimes knows all too well what impact a drunk driver can have on a life – she has lived with the consequences for nearly five decades.

Grimes was just 19 when she and her husband Michael became the proud parents of a beautiful baby girl, Catherine Michelle. “My life went from one of the happiest days in my life, the day I was released from the hospital to start my life and family with my first daughter, to being alive and crushed inside a burning car unable to escape,” she said.

Hit by a drunk driver, the Grimes’ car exploded in a fiery ball of flames trapping the two young parents, their 5 day old daughter and Grimes’s mother inside. Instead of trying to help save the family, the driver fled the scene. Despite the raging inferno, Grimes’s brother who was driving behind the young family raced against time to save his loved ones. Though burned on his hands, arms and face, her brother never stopped trying to rescue his family. Sadly, Grimes’s mother and tiny Catherine Michelle died from their injuries.

“The only picture I have of her is the one taken through the nursery window,” she said.

Four days after the crash, Grimes was transferred from a Tyler hospital to Parkland Memorial Hospital’s Regional Burn Center where she spent the next several months. Suffering severe burns, multiple broken bones and a severed foot that had to be reattached, Grimes vividly remembers the debridement process whereby nurses would remove the dead skin from her body.

“I begged them to stop,” she recalled. “Little did I know this was just the start of months of begging them to let me just die.”

But she added, “The Parkland nurses were so sweet and caring and how they continued to do their job is beyond me. I knew this whole thing was just a nightmare and if I screamed as loud as I could for as long as I could, I’d wake up and this wouldn’t be happening.”

But it was happening.

Grimes’s injuries occurred long before Parkland began its efforts to help burn survivors with not only their physical scars but emotional scars as well. Despite the compassionate care she received, Grimes said she often felt isolated and alone.

“Severe burn injuries are thankfully quite rare. But that means that sometimes our patients go home feeling like no one else around them understands what they are going through,” says Stephanie Campbell, MS, RN, CCRN-K, Burn Program Manager, Parkland Regional Burn Center. “We’ve come a long way in the 40-plus years since Cindy was injured, and one area of burn care that is getting more and more attention is the support that survivors need beyond discharge from the hospital. The connection that burn survivors and their family members feel when they share their experiences and provide support to each other is extremely powerful. We are figuring out that sometimes the best medicine is simply bringing people together.”

Over the decades, Parkland’s burn survivor aftercare program has grown to include an annual reunion, an adult retreat, support group, a peer support program and other social events for survivors and their families. In 2017, Parkland created the RISE (Resources Inspiration Support Experiences) Program for Burn Survivors and Families to pull all aftercare resources under one comprehensive umbrella.

“Part of the RISE program includes formally identifying patients who might benefit from getting involved in our burn survivor community and ensuring that they leave the hospital understanding the resources available to them,” Campbell said. “We actually visit with them at their bedside and start the conversation about aftercare before they go home. We explain to patients how many of our burn survivors feel that meeting others has helped them through challenging times in their recovery. ”

During RISE visits experienced burn nurses provide information to patients and families about local resources such as the burn survivor support group, peer support program and any upcoming events. Other topics include going back out into public with visible scarring and how to cope with staring and questions from strangers. National online resources for burn survivors are also reviewed and patients take home a packet with RISE information. Patients can sign up for RISE communications so they always know when the next event or support group will occur.

“We already had an amazing network of burn survivors wanting to help others, so we created RISE to continue to build this strong sense of community. Since creating RISE, we have added more events to help our patients and families find each other. We’ve had an ice cream social, a Burn Awareness Week party and even an outdoor challenge day for adult burn survivors,” Campbell noted. “A wonderful and unexpected outcome of creating RISE is that we are finding more and more patients who were injured years or even decades ago who want to be a part of the RISE community.”

Grimes first heard about the support group through a fellow burn survivor from her area. Recently she has attended a RISE burn survivor party held in East Texas and the adult burn survivor retreat.

As tears welled, Grimes looked at those seated nearby at a recent burn survivors retreat and said the support groups were the first time she felt as if she “fit in.” Describing the isolation she experienced over the last 40 years, she said not only did she lose her mother and first-born child in the fiery crash, but she “lost Cindy, too.”   

“Yes, I have hard days. Yes, I get depressed. Yes, I hate being covered in grotesque scars. Yes, I’ve thought about suicide. But, yes, I’ve had a good life because I decided I was going to have a good life,” Grimes said. “I have a loving family and friends, and I have a Lord who is always there for me at any minute of any day to talk to.

“I’ve tried doing it alone, but that’s not possible. It takes your faith, your family and friends, but it also takes guts and determination and sometimes telling yourself every hour on the hour that you can handle this because you are bigger than any scar that covers you.” For information about services available at Parkland, visit www.parklandhospital.com