MEMPHIS, Tenn. (WMC) – On Thanksgiving Day, one Memphian is remembering how grateful she is for the heroes at Regional One’s Firefighters Burn Center after a brush with fire during the height of the pandemic.

Christen Jones is back to doing what she loves, capturing memories that’ll last forever, but this time of year she remembers what she’s overcome.

“I had an accident in October of 2020, where I fell into an active, burning fire pit,” said former patient Christen Jones.

Christen, tripped trying to avoid stepping on her two dogs, and ended up with fourth-degree burns on her backside and leg area.

She didn’t start feeling the effects until days later.

“I actually just went inside and went to bed that night,” said Jones. “What I didn’t know is that when you have fourth-degree burns, it actually burns your nerve endings. It actually burns through the tissue and the fat and the nerve endings so you actually don’t feel a lot of pain until one day later to two days later and your body kind of has that adrenaline rush. I actually didn’t know it was that bad.”

Christen stayed at Regional One’s Firefighters Burn Center for 27 days, undergoing skin graft surgery and treatment.

“When we get a patient with severe burns, it’s not only the wounds we look at,” said Surgeon at Regional One’s Firefighter Burn Center Dr. Mahmoud Hassouba. “We evaluate the patient as a whole.”

Dr. Mahmoud Hassouba, surgeon for the Burn Center, says the center treats all kinds of burns and is one of the few in the country verified by the American Burn Center Association.

“If the burn covers more skin than the size of the palm of your hand or the burn goes all around your arm or leg, that’s when you should seek medical advice or a burn center,” said Dr. Hassouba.

Jones says she didn’t think she’d stay at hospital as long as she did, but says the staff at Regional One got her on the road to recovery.

“You could just tell,” said Jones. “It wasn’t like checking in, checking out. They were legitimately advocating for their patients, making sure we were comfortable. Oddly enough come full circle, I do photography for a living. I do the headshots now at Regional One for a particular area of the company and I get to walk past the burn unit every time I get to do a new headshot.”

Regional One says the top burns they see are fire, electric and chemical burns.

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