Ammie Reddick from East Kilbride, Lanarkshire, was only 18 months old when she had the accident that had scarred (留下创伤) her for life. The child reached up to get a hot bottle in the family kitchen and poured boiling water over her body.
Her mother Ruby turned round and, seeing Ammie badly burnt, rushed her daughter to a nearby hospital. Twenty percent of Ammie's body had been burned and all of her burns were third-degree. There, doctors performed an operation that took about six hours to control her injuries. Over the next 16 years, Ammie received 12 more operations to repair her body.
When she started school at Maxwelton Primary at age 4, other pupils said cruel words or simply wouldn't play with her. “I was the only burned child in the street, the class and the school,” she said, “some children refused to become friends because of that.”
Today, aged 17, Ammie can only ever remember being a burned person with scars; pain is apermanentpart of her body. She still has to have two further operations. Yet she is a confident, outgoing teenager who offers hope to other young burns victims (受害者).
She is a member of the Scottish Burned Children's Club. This month, Ammie will be joining the younger children at the Graffham Water Center in Cambridge for the first summer camp. “I'll show them how to get rid of unkind looking from others,” she says. Ammie loves wearing fashionable (时尚的) clothes, and she plans to show the youngsters at the summer camp that they can too. “I do not hide my burns scars,” she says, “I gave up wondering how other people would say years ago.”
