South Carolina woman's hand amputated after burning it in freak accident with hair dryer
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A South Carolina woman is recovering from a horrific accident where she burned her hand so badly with a blow dryer that it had to be amputated.
Mary Wilson says she is taking a positive outlook on life after losing her hand and wrist in the freak Feb. 7 accident, according to WCIV.
Wilson was doing an everyday chore, drying her hair before bed at her James Island home when she suddenly passed while out clutching the appliance.
She slumped to the floor and landed on the blow dryer, but the device was still running on high power and it scorched her hand, giving her third-degree burns.
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Wilson said she was lying passed out on the floor for about 20 minutes before her partner found her on top of the hair-dryer.
"She’s telling me, ‘Your hand, your hand,’" Wilson told WCIV.
"I look at my hand. I don’t even register that’s a part of me. It doesn’t even look recognizable."
Wilson was rushed to the hospital where doctors said her injuries were so bad -- due to the severe nerve damage caused by the hair dryer’s heat -- that her hand and wrist needed to be amputated.
"The burns on my hand were third-degree burns, they were all the way to the bone," Wilson said.
She said that the blow dryer did not have an automatic shut-off, like other hot hair tools, and that such a safety mechanism may have saved her hand.
"You see it with hair straighteners and flat irons — they do have that ceramic plate that once it gets to a certain temperature, it turns off," she said.
"If it did, then maybe my injuries wouldn’t have been so bad."
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It is unclear what caused Wilson to pass out, although she believes a shock from the appliance caused her to faint.
Wilson says she had to give up her job as a dog groomer and is unsure if she will be able to return to the role in the future.
"I absolutely miss it, I miss the dogs, I miss the clients," Wilson said.
"It really kind of puts in perspective all the other issues that I was dealing with in my life six months ago are so insignificant to things that I’m having to go through now, or challenges that I’m going to have to be going through in the future," she told WCIV.
"I’m still going to live my life to the fullest. It’s just a hand. What is this, 10% of my body? Losing my hand may be something that changes who I am, but that doesn’t mean that it defines me on everything," Wilson told the outlet.
Wilson said that Bohemian Bull, a local restaurant, is planning on donating profits generated from an upcoming cornhole tournament to help her recovery efforts.
She said she has received plenty of support on her road to recovery, calling it "incredible."
"It’s support that I never even knew that I had and it definitely meant a lot," she told 15 News.