Shanieya Bland was nine years old when 45% of her body was burned in a terrible accident. Two years later, her mom Angie Knight is celebrating her long recovery, expressing gratitude for the staff at the Miami Burn Center at Jackson Memorial Hospital that helped them through it.
“We did come a long ways," Knight told NBC 6. "Like watching people stare at us. That was hard. Her going to the beach. She wouldn’t wear short pants. Now she goes to the beach. She wears a bathing suit, so little things excite me."
Angie knight says her daughter was playing with alcohol and fire in the bathroom when she set herself on fire.
“I guess she’d been on Youtube and TikTok watching videos, because they had a challenge going on," she said.
Luis De Rosa, a burn unit nurse, says burn incidents are 100% preventable. He coordinates events that teach children how to keep themselves safe around flames.
“The most common burn injury is pediatric scald burn, so that’s like a hot liquid, a hot soup," DeRosa said. "Coincidentally, at the start of the pandemic, kids were not going to school so a lot of kids were at home, so we did see an uptick of children that were burned at home."
Knight says Shanieya had four skin graft surgeries, blood transfusions and had to learn to walk again during her two-year recovery. Now, at eleven years old, Shanieya and her mother consider the burn staff at JMH, family.
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Check out this link to learn more about how to prevent burn incidents at home.
