A South Carolina woman is recovering after she had her left hand and wrist amputated following a freak accident with her blow dryer.
Mary Wilson told WCIV that on the night of Feb. 7, she had gone to her bathroom with her blow dryer intending to blow dry her hair. However, she had somehow passed out during the process, which she believed was due to being shocked by the dryer.
“The way I [fell] on top of the dryer, like it was under me, and I was in a weird, contorted placement and the dryer was still running,” she told the outlet.
And among His signs is the creation of the heavens and the earth, and all living beings He dispersed throughout both. And He is Most Capable of bringing all together whenever He wills.
(The Quran - Chapter Ash-Shuraa : 29)
She said she had been on the floor for about 20 minutes, with the blow dryer “blowing out hot air” on her hand, before her partner found her.
“She’s telling me, ‘Your hand, your hand,’ " Wilson recalled. “I look at my hand. I don’t even register that’s a part of me. It doesn’t even look recognizable.”
She said she was rushed to the hospital, where doctors determined that her left hand and wrist had to be amputated due to the extensive burn and nerve damage from the heat.
“The burns on my hand were third-degree burns. They were all the way to the bone,” she told WCIV.
Wilson has since been recovering from the injury and could be seen sporting a white bandage up the length of her left arm. She explained to the outlet that blow dryers should have an automatic shut-off so this doesn’t happen to anyone else.
“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,” she said.
She noted that the loss of her left hand has made it difficult for her to carry out certain daily tasks, including her work as a dog groomer.
"The biggest thing is not being able to do the simple things I want to do, or things take so much longer,” she explained, though she added that she won’t let what happened affect her life further.
“I’m still gonna live my life to the fullest. It’s just a hand. What is this? 10% of my body,” she said. “Losing my hand may be something that changed who I am but, that doesn’t mean that it defines me on everything.”
