The doctors didn’t expect her to walk out of the hospital until April. Instead, Ginger Peters stepped out of the UNC Burn Center in mid-November, more than five months ahead of schedule, and just in time for the holiday she had hoped for.
Returning home by Thanksgiving had once seemed impossible.
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What happened next, she says, felt like a miracle.
“Eleven days from virtually waking up to coming home was not even what I expected, but I pushed,” Peters said.
Her message now, heading into the holiday season: sparklers can be far more dangerous than many people realize.
Celebration turned to medical emergency.
The night of the accident was supposed to be joyful.
Peters and her husband, Allen, had attended a friend’s wedding. When they returned home, they continued celebrating her birthday in their backyard. Sparklers were a familiar, harmless tradition —something the couple had used even at their own wedding.
Then a single ember fell onto the hem of her dress.
“A little ember fell right on the bottom of my dress, and from there it virtually engulfed (me),” she recalled.
“It got my backside, my ankles. It was just underneath the dress, just staying there.”
Her husband tried to smother the flames with his own body.
“I was just scared we were going to lose her,” he said.
By the time emergency crews arrived, 40 percent of Peters’ body had been burned, and surgeons later used an additional 20 percent of her skin for grafting.
“You were a little over 50 percent, and most people don’t even make it through 50 percent,” Allen Peters explained.
Sparklers, often marketed as a safer alternative to fireworks, burn hot enough to melt metal. They are a leading cause of firework-related emergency room visits in the United States.
A recovery few predicted
Complications began almost immediately. Fluid collected around her lungs, and her condition deteriorated.
“It quickly transitioned to a pulmonary issue more than a burn issue,” she said.
Peters was placed on a life-support machine. She drifted in and out of consciousness for weeks. Her medical team warned that she would likely remain hospitalized well into the spring.
“Originally it was April,” she said of her expected discharge date.
But slowly, her body began to stabilize. The pace of her healing surprised her physicians. Friends created a goal chart to track every milestone. Her husband rarely left her side. Nurses and therapists pushed her to walk, breathe deeply, reconstruct muscle memory and rebuild strength.
“Friends and family stepped up big time,” she said.
Being in the burn unit also meant witnessing the loneliness of others.
“There’s a lot of people in the burn unit who don’t have their family,” she said. “That’s really tough to see.”
After months of surgeries, therapy and setbacks, she improved enough to go home more than 100 days earlier than expected.
A holiday warning
Thanksgiving is the No. 1 day for cooking fires in the U.S., according to fire officials. Sparklers send more than 1,000 people to the emergency room every year, many of them children. Synthetic fabrics can ignite almost instantly.
Peters hopes others will take her story to heart.
“I want to get that message across going into the holiday season,” she said.
“This could happen to anyone. If the ember falls the wrong way, it’s a disaster.”
She plans to spend Thanksgiving in Chapel Hill, surrounded by some of the people who helped her survive.