‘I was burnt completely and left to die’ – 22-yr-old burn survivor Desire Benjamin shares her emotional story

Sometime last year, then 21-year-old aspiring model, Desire Benjamin Chinenye defied all odds to live and heal after an indoor gas explosion left her burnt completely and almost to the point of death.

Here’s what happened; “She woke up at about 6am to boil water to bathe for work, she turned on the gas and struck the matches, it didn’t catch, then she did it again, it was then we heard the explosion.

The fire threw her against the door, and then blocked her exit, according to her, she didn’t know the force dat got her too her feet, and so she entered the fire and rushed out of the kitchen to the room, the fire chased her out, the rug where she was standing on got burnt.” ‘Her family members who had been asleep when the explosion happened jumped out of bed and amidst the chaos, did the first logical thing that came to mind: grabbed a few buckets of water from the bathroom and threw on her. They succeeded in quenching the fire, but by this time, c was so badly burnt and had passed out. ‘

The first hospital they took her to refused to offer any treatment at all. Not because they didn’t want to but because they simply felt there was no point. She was as good as gone- a smouldering remainder of the bubbly girl that Desire had been.

Fast forward to yesterday 20th of September,  A new Chinenye, who has now healed and learned how to embrace her scars, shared her story with the 234Stars on what really happened, how she survived and how this incident brought out a new her. ‘I had a friend in the hospital that we used to pray together. One night, her line went flat (ie the electrocardiogram which monitored her heart beat pinged off, signifying that she had stopped breathing).’ Another pointer that the very next second wasn’t guaranteed- she too could simply stop breathing at anytime.But she didn’t.

She endured the pain, sometimes bursting into maniacal laughter from excessive pain that her brain could not properly process. Eventually, by some sort of miracle the burns healed enough for her to start learning how to walk again before being certified fit to leave the hospital.