Burn Camp
Once upon a time, in the fall semester of 2012, I took a class called Overview of Medical Conditions. It was a two-credit course that introduced us to different types of injuries that Occupational Therapists may treat. Each week, we had different primarily-OT guest lecturers who treated those specific injuries (spinal cord, neuro, ortho, etc.). There, I met Eileen Riordan. At the time, Eileen was the Occupational Therapist practicing in the Burns Intensive Care Unit at Columbia St. Mary’s Hospital (Eileen is retired now, and CSM is a part of Ascension Health. I am old). Eileen came to the class to speak on the role of OT in treating patients who had experienced burn injuries. I don’t think they would mind me saying this: every other member of my class was horrified by the topic. Some left the room, others could not or would not look up from their desks to see the pictures on the PowerPoint slides. Me? I was profoundly interested: I had never been more interested in an area of OT practice than I was in that moment. My life literally changed in that hour.
After class was over, I went up to Eileen and asked if it was possible to shadow her for a day, and she happily agreed, telling me that she rarely had students who were interested in Burns. I spent one day in the BICU with her, and it truly opened my eyes to what working in this area entailed. I saw patients with injuries ranging from first to fourth degree burns on all different areas of their bodies. I saw patients in different states of sedation: some on mechanical ventilators, others medically sedated, and still others fully alert and oriented. Patients were generally seen twice a day by both OT and PT with Speech also in the rounds. I was able to see nursing providing those patients with their burn cares: taking down dressings, properly positioning the person, then redressing their wounds — this can take literally hours depending on the extent and location of the injuries. This visit is also when I met Melissa Kersten.
Melissa was — and still is — the Nurse Practitioner for the BICU. She runs a tight ship and, good god, there are few people more knowledgeable about all things burns related than her. She remains one of my burns mentors, and a mentor in general. She is also the Director of the Professional Firefighters of Wisconsin Camp for Burn Injured Youth (at the time we met, she was the Teen Girls’ Coordinator). I’ve condensed the story of how I met Melissa and learned about Burn Camp for the sake of your time: While waiting for Eileen to complete some documentation, I wandered over to the Nurses station where I found the magazine from the Phoenix Society. There was an article in the magazine about a Burn Camp in another state. I asked Eileen whether Wisconsin had a Burn Camp: “Yes,” she said, “and Melissa Kersten knows a lot about it.” She is how I got the camp’s contact information; I emailed the office, received, filled out, and sent in an application, and voila! I was the newest member of the Burn Camp Family.
That second week of August in 2013, I spent my first week as a counselor! Not only was it my first week at Burn Camp — it was my first week ever at a sleep away camp (leave me alone). It was amazing. I was a Youth Girls Counselor, and I had a blast — so much so that I returned the next summer in the same role. In the time between those two camps, I completed a Level III fieldwork on the BICU with Eileen, learning splinting, specialized range of motion, and wound care. I honed my craft and fell further in love with the area of practice, and where I fell in love with practicing in acute care. My third summer, that August of 2015, I faced a hurdle: I was a new graduate, had recently gotten married, and was living in Manhattan. I didn’t have the vacation time or the financial ability to take the time off to go back to camp. It broke my heart, but I stayed home that year.
Fast forward to 2016. My husband and I had moved back to Wisconsin, and I was looking for a job. Luckily for me, I was hired at Columbia St. Mary’s as a PRN OT. No benefits, but plenty of hours and the ability to be in the hospital that I fell in love with as a student. I got to work on the BICU and fell back in with the burns family I had cultivated. Plus, I started going to camp again! This time, though, I had a new role: I was promoted to Youth Girls’ Coordinator! I oversaw the counselors, and I got my own room. Which brings me to today. I have been the YGC for the last seven years with no immediate plans to “retire.” I have gone to camp while pregnant and while nursing; we had virtual camp in 2020, and a split week of camp in 2021. This year, we were back to the “old way,” and it felt like nothing had changed. I love that Baer sees me in this role, and I enjoy showing him that sometimes you do something just because it’s the right thing to do. There is no money in it, all of us that spend the week at camp are volunteers. We do it because it makes our hearts happy to give these kids the best damn week of their summers. We do it because it makes our hearts full. We do it because these kids are our family.