July of 1987. I was about to enter my sophomore year of high school. Mike (a friend of mine) and I were at his house enjoying the fruitful bounty (or is it “bountiful fruit”?) of fireworks that my dad had bought me. Now bear in mind that I live in Illinois, and all fireworks of the “exploding” variety are illegal here. The old man had gotten these fireworks in Illinois, so they were only of the “spark-shooting” variety. Pretty drab, but what are you gonna do?
One of the fireworks was this green-paper-covered gem that was about two feet long and maybe two inches in diameter. I set it on Mike’s driveway, walked up, lit the fuse, stepped back, and…
…it shot sparks, just like every other damn firework that we had lit thus far. It didn’t even whistle! After watching the 12-inch-long jet-trail of sparks that this thing was sputtering out, I decided that I had enough of this boring-assed legal-in-Illinois crap.
You know that little tag on every single firework in existence that says “Set on ground / light fuse / step away”? Neither did I. At the time, my friend Mike was on crutches so I thought that it would be a real hoot to pick this firework up and shoot sparks at him with it. After all, he can’t exactly run away from me, can he? Yeah, I know, I was a great friend to have back then.
So I pick it up and start running after him with this thing in my hands (I’m holding it not unlike how one would hold a rifle), and then it happens.
pop
That’s all I heard. Apparently the blast from this thing was loud enough to make Mike’s mom come out of the house, but all I heard was just a quick pop, following by the most incredible ringing in my ears as total deafness took ensued. I might have been a little freaked out about the fact that I had suddenly gone deaf, if it weren’t for the fact that I was blinded too. All I could see was white. Talk about panic.
After about 60-90 seconds or so (and I’m wildly guessing at these times) my vision started to come back to me; everything slowly faded back into view much like what happens when you turn an older television set on. About 30-60 seconds after that, I was slowly starting to make out faint sounds again.
As my senses started to return to me, the first thing that I was aware of was Mike standing right next to me beating the hell out of me! I then realized that my shirt and hair were on fire, and he was really trying to pat the flames out.
Around the time that I had been extinguished to his satisfaction, Mike’s mom came running out of the house asking what had happened and if I was all right. I was still in shock; I remember just mumbling, “Uhhh, a firework went off.”
She led me into the house and ran cold water in the kitchen sink for me to run over my hands. It actually felt good…until I looked down at my hands. It was just like a scene from a sci-fi movie. I watched as the skin around my hands started to tighten, and then eventually crack and split open. I turned my hands over and watched this process travel up the around my hands and up my forearms.
I deftly summarized my situation with a cursory, “Uh-oh.”
Mike’s mom saw what was happening and told me to get in her car, as she was going to take me to the emergency room. I said that I needed to call my mom and let her know what was going on. I distinctly remember watching my hand shard away before my eyes as I was dialing my phone number.
Once at the emergency room, I was led to a bed where my shirt (well, what was left of it) was cut off of me, and cloths were laid over my arms while saline was poured on the cloths to give me relief until the doctor could see me. Mom and Dad arrived shortly thereafter.
Around this time, the pain started to become unbearable. I was given some kind of shot as a pain-killer, which didn’t do crap. The doctor examined me and found that I had second-degree burns on both hands and forearms, with a little third-degree burning in both palms and my right wrist. He then announced that the burnt flesh on my arms and hands would have to come off. Again, all I could do was mutter, “Uh-oh.”
The doctor produced the biggest damn pair of tweezers that I had ever seen, and I bit down on a washcloth as he removed the skin from my hands and arms. My mother - who is a registered nurse - almost threw up and passed out. That was comforting.
Once I had been exfoliated, my hands and arms were covered with a white cream and wrapped in gauze and I was sent on my way, with instructions to see my family practitioner the next day. Needless to say, I didn’t sleep very well that night.
The next day we went to our family doctor’s office. The nurse had me sit on the table, where she removed all of the gauze bandaging that I had on. She then told me that “the doctor will see you shortly”, and she left the room. Ever had bare nerves exposed before? Man, the slightest little bit of breeze made it feel like my arms were on fire all over again. So I sat there with both arms in front of me waiting. And waiting. And waiting.
Finally the doctor comes in, takes one look at my arms, and asks, “Who put all of this white gunk on your arms??” When I told him that it was done at the ER, he said, “Well, that stuff has got to come off!” Guess how? Yup, with a scrub brush. He literally scoured the cream off me. Ouch.
So that’s basically the long and the short of it. For a while we thought that I’d have to have skin from my hiney grafted onto my arms (insert joke here about how I wouldn’t know my ass from my elbow), but what ended up happening was that the doctor had this mesh-like wrapping that he wrapped my arms and hands with, which served as a “template” of sorts for my skin to grown into. And I’ll be damned…it worked. After the skin initially grew back, both of my arms swelled and turned into the biggest damn blisters that you’ve ever seen, but everything eventually grew back.
The only complication cropped up when the skin around my wrists grew back in. I hadn’t kept my wrists stretched since it hurt too much, and the skin that grew in didn’t allow for me to stretch my wrists back. In other words, I would have been permanently “limp-wristed”. I couldn’t have that, so I just stretched them back - ripping the skin in the process - and let them heal back that way.
Really, the only lingering signs that I still have are that my bottoms of my forearms and my hands will not tan properly…they just get kind of red and splotchy. But outside of that, everything is fine. I really could’ve been a lot worse off that I was. When you consider that I was holding the firework in front of me, and it caught the back of my shirt and hair on fire, I think that I came out okay. Hell, I’m lucky that I wasn’t permanently blinded.
If you’re the type that demands visual aids, see http://www.arcadeparadise.org/sa/firework1.jpg . This picture was taken about a month after the fact, once everything had pretty much grown back.
Oh yes, how did I end up in a huge fireball with a firework that was only supposed to shoot sparks? The only thing that I can surmise is that the gunpowder in the firework must have somehow gotten compacted.
The only real highlight of the evening: When my parents arrived at the ER, my mother - in true “mom” fashion - right away asked me where the hell I had gotten these fireworks. Imagine her delight when I blurted out, “Dad bought them!” Poor guy.