‘Not an easy path’: Burn survivor reflects on long recovery facing soldiers injured in Wainwright fire

More than two decades after Spencer Beach was severely burned in a flash fire, he wants to offer comfort to the soldiers caught in the flames at Canadian Forces Base Wainwright.

On April 24, 2003, Beach was at work when the chemical solvent he was using to remove vinyl flooring in a house under construction in south Edmonton ignited.

Within seconds, he was engulfed, suffering third- and fourth-degree burns to 90 per cent of his body.

Beach — who went on to become a motivational speaker and mentor to other burn-injury survivors in Edmonton — said he knows the difficult recovery facing service members who were badly burned at Wainwright, Alta.

Military officials said, as of last week, 27 of the soldiers remain in hospital, including 13 in critical condition.

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In a recent interview with Edmonton AM host Tara McCarthy, Beach spoke about what may lie ahead for them and how he hopes to help them find strength.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What can you tell us about what these soldiers in the hospital might be experiencing?

What I know what they’re going through, early on, is they’re most likely heavily medicated. With severe burns, they are probably also comatose at this moment. They’re probably in a real deep dream state where they’re having nightmares, which is what I experienced, at least. And the physical care is they have to remove all the damaged tissue. If they don’t, it just will start to break down and create room for bacteria and infection to start, so they have to get rid of that.

They use donated skin from deceased people as part of the transplant to cover early burns.  But they also have an artificial skin they do use. It has a collagen layer in it that allows the blood flow to start developing. So when they do the skin graft, there will already be that healthy layer of blood vessels for the skin to go into. 

And how integral is that, the donated skin and then any other options that are available? 

The No. 1 risk after being burned is infection, and the skin graft provides a barrier for that to protect you from bugs and germs and stuff. The other risk is if you have an inhalation injury, which I did. When you have an inhalation injury, it drastically takes your odds of survival down so that would be the other side that could be a huge, huge risk for these soldiers right now.

When you’re in this sort of immediate state after injury, what did that look like for you physically, emotionally as you went through that?

Physically, you lose a lot of weight. They put you on the maximum amount of calories your body can consume in a day, and it wasn’t enough. I went down to about 112 pounds. I’m 6 foot 2 and 220 pounds now. So, I lost a lot of weight. My body was consuming itself for energy. 

You’re in pain, a lot of it, and the medication dulls the pain; it doesn’t get rid of it. You’re also going to be immobile. There’s a lot of scar tissue happening. They could be using pins in the fingers to keep them straight until they can get your hands moving again. But your scar tissue on your ligaments and joints starts setting in really fast. So you’re pretty much immobile. There’s a lot going on really, really fast. 

What’s involved in the day-to-day healing process? At what phase were you able to start even examining what mobility looked like?

My burns were extremely big and they gave me just a five per cent chance to live. My fire also was extremely hot because it was a chemical fire. So I’m assuming that these soldiers’ burns are not going to be as big as mine. But for me, it was about nine months until I could start rolling over.

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There is a lot of lying around in isolation. You get your bandage changes and they do take a long time. They medicate you for the bandage changes as well. And then you go on to therapy. You’ll do occupational therapy, which is to get your function of daily life of just being able to eat, drink, go to the washroom, change — all that kind of stuff. 

And then there is the physiotherapy, which is really just pain therapy because they have to tear through all that scar tissue to get your joints moving again.

What really helped you as you went through your own circumstances? 

The biggest thing that helped me was my faith, but also my support network. I have found that when I mentor people, those with strong support networks have the best odds of getting through this and finding mental happiness again and becoming a very active person in society. 

Those with very poor or nonexistent support networks, they struggle really hard because you’re on your own and you have to navigate this on your own. And it’s not an easy path. 

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Your family will give you time and space and support for that process to happen. You don’t get severe scars and look in the mirror and be like, ‘Oh, well, this is how it’s going to be for the rest of my life.’ 

There is a process to adapting. When I first looked in the mirror, I could only focus on my nose. It took months for me to actually look in the mirror and examine my entire face and realize all the things that have changed it. 

The fire is not just a physical injury, it’s a mental injury. It takes your identity away in many ways. 

What helped you down that path to reconnect with your identity or, in a way, find a new one, especially as a motivational speaker?

When I go on to the burn unit, the very first thing I tell anybody is there’s not a problem in life where time is not a part of the solution. We all want instant gratification and we wish that this never happened, but it happened and you’re in a process. It’s a journey and you have to work with the journey. You’re going to have high days, you’re going to have down days. And I say embrace it all. 

The burn survivors I’ve met that have come through their journey, their emotional intelligence is off the charts because we get to know so many things about ourselves and about life that we experience in the burn unit, just because we’ve gone through such a traumatic injury.

Do you have a certain message you’d like to share with the soldiers who are currently in hospital now recovering?

Anger can destroy you, but it can also give you the strength to move through things. And when I’m allowed to, I will come to the burn unit and I will teach you what I know about anger and I will help you through that process.