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Idaho Falls (EastIdahoNews.com) — An Idaho Falls toddler is recovering in the hospital after being severely burned while visiting family in Colorado.
Millie Camp was with her mother, Samantha Camp, and two siblings when the accident happened Friday, June 14.
“We were visiting my sister near Cortez, Colorado,” Samantha tells EastIdahoNews.com. “She has a really small trailer house so my kids and I and my mom were sleeping in a tent outside. My sister had put a pork roast in a big roasting pot the night before and it was cooking all night long.”
The roaster was on the floor of the kitchen plugged into a wall, according to Samantha. As she went to get some items out of the refrigerator, she heard 2-year-old Millie start to cry.
“I turned around and she had sat right inside of that roaster. There was a lid on it and she must have just pushed it or it fell off and she went right in,” Samantha recalls. “It was really scary. I hurried and took off her zipper pajamas. My mom was yelling at my niece to turn on the cold water in the bathtub and I ran to the bathroom with her.”
Blisters started forming on Millie’s lower back and both of her legs. Samantha told her father they needed to go to the hospital and called her husband, Joshua, who was in eastern Idaho.
“I had to work that week so I was in Idaho and Sam called me around 9:30, 10 o’clock that morning. It was really scary and we were very worried,” Joshua says.
Millie could not sit down because of the burns so Samantha held her wrapped in a cold, wet towel the entire way to the hospital. To make matters worse, they hit a construction zone and were at a dead stop for 15 minutes.
“That was painful. She was miserable and couldn’t get comfortable. It was awful,” Samantha says.
When the family finally arrived at the hospital, the burns were so severe that doctors decided to have Millie airlifted to Children’s Hospital Colorado in Aurora.
“The burns were really deep – like to the fat on her legs,” Samantha says, noting that it was a blessing her daughter was in a diaper or more parts of her body would have been burned.
Doctors had to scrub Millie’s wounds and remove dead skin before attaching skin grafts.
“They actually took the skin grafts from a cadaver and it heals for a certain time and then the body starts rejecting it,” Samantha says. “They’ll use those for now and then probably use her own skin to finish it up.”
Samantha and Millie were able to fly home to Idaho Falls Monday where the young child is now being treated in the burn unit at Eastern Idaho Regional Medical Center. She was released Tuesday but readmitted Thursday because of the severity of the burns.
“I’m going through emotional stages. It’s an emotional roller coaster and I keep flashing back to what happened,” Samantha says.
Millie will hopefully be going home this week but she will have many appointments, procedures and treatments in the coming year as her body continues to heal.
The Camps are thankful for the amount of support they’ve received over the past week. Joshua says their medical bills could reach $40,000 so friends set up donation accounts to help with medical bills. Brad Barlow, the owner of B2X photo, is selling $10 high-resolution photo downloads through Monday with 100 percent of the proceeds going to the Camp family.
“We are so thankful for everyone’s love. We’re not really the type of family that asks for help and we have so much love and support and we’re very grateful for that,” Samantha says.
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Nate Eaton
neaton@eastidahonews.com208-535-8304
