Anonymous asked:
Hello, I have a character who acquires third degree burn scars at a certain point in the story. Across most of her left side, but I’m mostly focused on her face for this ask. A sizeable portion of her cheek skin is burned away and some of her teeth are exposed, and part of her ear is burned as well. While the burns are healing would she have trouble opening her mouth very wide and would her hearing be affected at all or would that be more of an inner ear injury? Thank you for your time!
cripplecharacters answered:
Hi!
A lot of it depends on the type of burn it is. She could be Deaf or hard of hearing if it was a blast or electrical injury, or if the burn affected the inside of her ears (like caused her eardrums to rupture or something similar). But if it’s just the outside, then I don’t think it would be affected.
The part about her teeth being exposed through the cheeks intrigued me, because I see this semi-often in drawings featuring burn survivors, but I have never seen it on a real person. I don’t want to say that there’s no people with this kind of injury, but it’s certainly not common. If something like this happened, she would probably just receive soft and hard tissue grafts and have the area reconstructed as much as possible. Her face might look asymmetric afterward and it could be discolored, or have nerve damage.
If the injury was that severe, she wouldn’t have trouble with doing anything right after because she wouldn’t be conscious. She would probably be put in a coma for the time of the many surgeries. I know that having your character out of the story for two months isn’t ideal, but you’re talking about an extremely serious injury. She wouldn’t be back to normal the next day.
She could struggle to open her mouth if the skin around her mouth or lips are affected. Remember that if her injury was deep enough to expose her teeth, she won’t have the same jaw or chin she did before. I would recommend to look at how real life burn survivors look like to give you a better idea of her appearance!
I hope this helps!
mod Sasza
