A long road to recovery for burn victims

Hours after the explosion ripped through her home, the flames searing her clothing and setting her belongings afire, Gayle Masunu watched a telecast of her San Bruno neighborhood. It was in ruins.

Her injuries, though, proved to be far less serious — first and second-degree burns, painful but treatable. Masunu was allowed to go home with relatives.

For the most desperate cases, however, the road to recovery is long and filled with risk.

Serious burn victims can endure multiple surgeries that stretch over months. In the first days, victims who have suffered burns over large portions of their bodies are at risk of going into shock. The risk of infection is so great in the weeks that follow that burn units won’t even let patients receive flowers — which could carry germs — from well-wishers, said Jeffrey DeWeese, a doctor at the Bothin Burn Center at San Francisco’s Saint Francis Memorial Hospital.

Many of the 52 injured in San Bruno were treated for burns. Eight remained hospitalized Friday, including four at Saint Francis Memorial with burns covering 40% to 50% of their bodies.

The pain stretches beyond the wounds themselves, said Bill Jensen, a firefighter who was severely burned in a Malibu brush fire in 1996.

“A burn is not like a broken bone that heals and you’re good to go. The scars last forever,” he said. People tend to stare at scars. Victims flinch when they see fires on television “And you’re going to spend a lot of your life asking, ‘Why did it happen to me?’ ”

Masunu, a preschool teacher who had recently taken time off to care for her 83-year-old mother, said she has the added hurdle of not having health insurance; she’s not sure how she will pay her medical bills. She is also unsure what sort of home insurance was held by her mother, who is being treated at San Francisco General Hospital.

When a fire is caused by an explosion, a patient’s burns aren’t the only possible medical concerns, said Dr. Peter Grossman, co-director of the Grossman Burn Centers.

The blast can damage organs such as the liver, spleen, intestines or heart. Smoke inhalation can damage the lungs. These factors can significantly increase the risk of severe disability or death, Grossman said.

The first step is to stabilize the patient. After three or four days of treatment with intravenous fluid and stabilizing drugs, the patient may begin painful skin-graft treatment, DeWeese said. Typically, the skin graft must be replaced every few days.

The grafts cover the wound, decrease the risk of infection, speed up the healing process and reduce scarring, Grossman said.

“The problem with scarring is that not only is it cosmetically disfiguring, but it’s functionally impairing as well because scar tissue does not have the same elasticity as normal tissue, so it’s harder to stretch it out,” he said.

But even in the most critical cases, survivors say there is hope.

Tony Yarijanian’s odds for survival were long after suffering burns over more than 90% of his body in 2004 in a gas explosion in his wife’s La Crescenta tanning salon.

Hospital staff told his wife to bring their two children to say their farewells, but she refused to give up, Yarijanian said. Six years, 49 surgeries and 60 blood transfusions later, he can see and walk again. He even has fingernails and facial hair, he said. Best of all, he can spend time with his family.

“I want to see the smile on their face every day,” he said. “Going through a trauma like that is just life-changing.”

Jensen, who underwent several dozen surgeries and some 3,600 skin grafts, says he is a better man today than he was 14 years ago, before the fire.

“We can live after a burn,” he said. “And the scars we have — we’re proud of them.”

alexandra.zavis@latimes.com

kate.linthicum@latimes.com

Staff writers Molly Hennessey-Fiske in San Bruno and Jennifer Guynn in San Francisco contributed to this report.