'There's more to life than looks': A burns survivor challenges our beauty-obsessed culture
When Jane Healy was nine years old, she was badly burned in a horrific accident. Despite painful operations and occasional unkind remarks, this hasn’t stopped her making the most of her life. As she says, the way we look is not important
Jane today near her home in Tunbridge Wells
When I played with methylated spirits with my brother and his friends on our camping adventure at the age of nine, I could never have imagined that I would end up hanging on to life in intensive care. When the stove blew up in my face, I was wearing non-fire-retardant pyjamas, and as I caught fire I ran for the hills while the fabric melted to me like glue, searing the skin underneath.
My summer of 1969 was spent at a severe burns unit with doctors battling to keep me alive. One night I woke up and they were wheeling a mortuary table to the bed next to mine for a ten-year-old boy who had been so badly burned playing on a railway line that he didn’t make it. The doctors encouraged me to go back to sleep, but I remember telling my mother I had a feeling that if I closed my eyes I would die. It wasn’t the pain that frightened me the most but the look of terror on my family’s faces. It was touch and go whether I would survive those first three weeks, but through some miracle I lived.
The severity of the burns meant that my head fused to my chest. I was left with no mobility above my shoulders and could only look down at my feet. So just one year after the shock of the accident, my parents had to make the brave decision to put me through a life-threatening operation, in which surgeons would rebuild my neck using skin and muscle tissue from my legs.
I was home-tutored for a period, but returned to primary school when I was 11, with all my friends a year ahead. My practical Mancunian family were wonderfully supportive. After the accident we closed ranks and resumed family life as normally as possible, and didn’t dwell on my appearance. They encouraged me to laugh off nasty jibes, but my early teenage years were extremely tough, looking as I did.
On top of all the insecurity that every teenage girl feels,
I would tie myself in knots trying to hide my body in the PE changing rooms. Because scar tissue doesn’t stretch like skin, I had to have dozens of operations to stop me from literally growing out of my skin, and I missed huge chunks of school. As a result, the distance from my peers wasn’t solely physical. I’d spent a lot of time in and out of hospital, and felt remote and isolated from the chitchat of girls around me. All I wanted was to look like everyone else instead of wearing my home-made cover-up costume for the swimming gala.
As I grew older, my confidence returned and I started to realise that self-assurance works. I was into fashion,
make-up and all things glamorous, which gave me the courage to speak to boys. One night a group of girls and boys from my school were meeting up at the local nightclub. I was looking my best and feeling great, and found myself getting lots of male attention. I was loving it. Then suddenly the Specials song ‘Gangsters’ with the line ‘Don’t call me scar face’ came on the PA system. My so-called friends had requested it. They were trying to humiliate me by reminding everyone of my disfigurement. I fled from the nightclub in floods of tears under the protective arm of my elder brother Peter. I was devastated. I couldn’t believe that people could be so cruel.
‘We are all human beings with flaws. My mantra has always been, “Get better, not bitter”’
Now when I think about it, I understand. To the girls in my peer group I was Jane with the burned face and they were happy to see me that way. They had accepted me because, until that moment, I hadn’t transcended my victim status. They simply thought no boy could ever find me attractive. It was only when I assumed a position of ‘normality’ that I became a threat to them. My brother Peter proved to be my best friend during that period, and I spent a lot of time with him and his mates. Because they were older, I found them far more accepting of my appearance and hanging out with them was a lot less complicated.
The physical disfigurement I could deal with; it was being treated like an invalid that upset me the most. I was that little girl down the road who people whispered about, and eventually I decided enough was enough. I didn’t want to be that tragic little girl any more. I lived in a small town and my parents could never protect me from that. At 16, I packed my bags and left home. My family were loving and supportive, but I wanted to be an independent person on my own terms. And my plan worked! By my early 20s I was thriving. With my new-found independence I had made lots of friends. I’d started dating and had landed a job working as a sales executive in a large company in Kent. I adored my job. People accepted me for who I was; not only that but I was great at it. When I dealt with clients face-to-face my scars never proved to be a problem because I had their respect as a professional.
Jane (far right) aged nine, with her sister Sally and brothers Peter (left) and Bob in 1969, a month before her accident
From left: Two years later, when she returned to school; her wedding day with husband Chris, 1989
Then one morning my father rang to tell me that he had made me an appointment with a prosthetics specialist in London. I had lost my ears in the accident, and there had been little the surgeons could do to reconstruct them. I had spent most of my teens covering this up with my thick hair, and instead of glamorous earrings I wore glitzy necklaces. But it had troubled my dad, so one afternoon I went to London to get myself a set of ears. When the specialist handed them to me nestled in cotton wool in a box, I found them creepy, but I knew my father had gone to a lot of trouble, so I glued them to my head, complete with snazzy earrings.
On the commuter train home, I felt so self-conscious that I couldn’t stop fiddling with them. I managed to get my hair caught behind my right ear and flicked it forward, at which point the ear flew through the air and landed in the aisle
with the earring still attached. Everybody, myself included, looked at it for a moment in silent horror until I took a deep breath, bent down and popped both ears back in the box. When I got back to work we had a real laugh about the ear fiasco, and I came to the conclusion that, ears or no ears, I was happy as I was. Trying to adapt my appearance to
please other people would never be a substitute for hard work and laughter.
I met my first long-term boyfriend at the age of 22. His name was Tony. My friend and I had gone to a wine bar in Tunbridge Wells and I spotted this gorgeous man on the other side of the room. My friend boldly strolled up to him and said, ‘My friend wants to go out with you, what do you say?’ Luckily, he said he would love to – and we stayed together for nine years. He loved me deeply for the person I was, and allowed me to well and truly kiss goodbye to that insecure teenager inside me. We both found people’s preoccupation with my imperfections hilarious, and he would stick my false ears to the telephone for a laugh. When we went out for dinner and people shot me patronising glances, his incredulity made me realise that it wasn’t me who had the problem. I always felt safe in the knowledge that he thought I was beautiful inside and out.
Jane with her daughter Laura, 21
I was ecstatic when I became pregnant with our first child and we were so excited about our life together, but shortly after I gave birth, we lost our beautiful son James to a cot death. Nothing I had experienced in my life could have prepared me for that degree of pain. When you lose a child, all the things you thought you were worried about instantly fade into obscurity. My relationship with Tony just couldn’t survive the grief so we made the decision to go our separate ways, but we remain friends today.
After the break-up I became very depressed. Like many women, I started to blame my problems on my appearance and booked myself an appointment with a plastic surgeon. I felt that my life was out of control and thought that if I could fix the scarring on my face, then things would instantly get better. When I saw the surgeon I think she could tell that I was a bit of a wreck. She asked me about my broken relationship – and sent me packing. She told me that I didn’t need surgery, I needed to get my life back – and she couldn’t have been more right. During that difficult time I stuck with good friends and family like glue. I am very straightforward with my close female friends because it demonstrates trust and respect, and my true mates are very special. They are wise, kind, independent women from different walks of life, and I cherish them deeply.
‘I know it hurt Laura when people at school made comments about my appearance, but I urged her to brush them off’
A year after Tony and I split up, I met my husband Chris. He proposed a week later, and we have been happily married for 22 years. When we had our daughter Laura, the experience of becoming a mother again was more important than anything else in my life, and when she suffered with acne as a teenager I found it difficult. All the pain I had experienced in my teens I felt both from a mother’s perspective and on her behalf. But I remembered what the plastic surgeon had said to me when I was feeling low, and encouraged Laura to look inside herself and helped nurture her singing talent. I know it hurt her when people at school made comments about my appearance, but I urged her to brush them off. Laura is now working as a civil servant and in the process of buying her first home, so I think I have taught her how to be her own person, do her own thing and enjoy life. I am, of course, extremely proud of her.
Chris and I both have full-time jobs and we thrive when we’re working. I still have regular operations, as keloid scar tissue does not stretch with your body. Last year I had the scar tissue around my mouth cut to allow me to smile more widely, but it’s a fairly routine procedure these days and if it will improve my quality of life, I just get on with it.
I embarrass my daughter all the time, but not because of my burns. Like any other mum I shout ‘yoo-hoo’ from the car window, sing too loudly in front of her friends, and ask her boyfriends inappropriate questions. I know it’s a cliché but there really is a lot more to life than the way you look: things such as watching your children grow up happy and healthy, romance, independence, family days out and evenings spent rolling around on the floor laughing. Some people have varicose veins, some people have spots, but we are all human beings with flaws. My mantra has always been, and always will be, ‘Get better, not bitter’, because there is no point sitting in front of the mirror weeping over your appearance when there’s champagne in the fridge that needs drinking.
