In 2010, Caleb Springer, then 23, was riding a friend’s scooter in his home state of Alaska. He didn’t realize that the gas cap was missing, and after he tipped the bike over, gasoline spilled onto his pants. An errant cigarette spark hit the gas, and Springer was quickly engulfed in flames from the bottom up. More than half of his body was burned.
Springer was airlifted from Valdez to Seattle’s Harborview Burn Center, more than 1,000 miles away. He would stay there for two months.
Third-degree burns are one of the most painful injuries a person can go through and survive. With other traumas—childbirth or surgery or breaking a limb—there’s a one-time event and then, if all goes well, the pain begins to ebb. In the aftermath of a severe burn, nurses are tasked with scrubbing away dead, damaged, and infected tissue to improve the odds that the living tissue survives. Physical therapy can be even worse. Other than knocking out patients entirely, there’s little dulling of the pain.
