Protect Our Children
If we change law, he will be a little hero
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| BURNS VICTIM: Daniel Mitchard-Harrison in hospital with his mother, Liza |
BLOND and blue-eyed, with a cheeky little smile and a penchant for sweets and cartoons, Daniel Mitchard-Harrison looks like a little angel.
Even laid up in his hospital bed with bandages from waist to feet and a catheter tube trailing to the floor, it is easy to see he is adorable.
But his family also describe Daniel as an adventurous little monkey, wilful, independent and since his accident, another adjective, brave.
His mother, Liza Mitchard-Harrison, 27, has not left his side for a month, not since his pyjama shorts caught fire and he suffered terrible burns.
She explains what happened.
"I put a log on the fire, closed the door and told him not to touch it. Then I put cartoons on the TV and went to put the kettle on.
"I heard him shouting 'fire' and as I rushed back, I saw him standing in the doorway. The fire had completely surrounded him. I grabbed hold of his legs and ripped the pyjamas off him and ran him straight upstairs into the bath, where I put cold water on him. Then my sister came running and put the pyjamas out."
In the few seconds it had taken Liza to walk to the kitchen, Daniel had managed to open the wood-burner, and a spark had landed on his shorts.
As Daniel's grandfather has since discovered, the same pyjamas Daniel was wearing ignite within two seconds and burn to almost nothing in seconds.
What happened next for Liza is a blur. A paramedic was called to the scene and the Great North Air Ambulance helicopter was sent.
Liza says: "When he was in the bath, I was trying my hardest not to cry. Daniel patted me on the back and said 'it's okay mummy'. He was trying to tell me he was okay, he wasn't even crying."
Because most of Daniel's burns were full thickness, the nerves under his skin had been damaged and it is likely that he could not feel the worst of the injuries.
"I remember Daniel crying in the helicopter and I was wishing it hadn't happened," says Liza.
She has felt terrible guilt, but as her husband and father keep telling her, her mistake to leave Daniel unattended for only a few seconds could happen to anyone. Ninety per cent of Daniel's burns were full thickness, and he has had to have skin grafts from his lower legs. It's hard to know exactly what two-year-olds remember, but Daniel has been having nightmares.
Liza says: "He knows what has happened and he says things like 'fire' and 'poorly'. He tells everybody, that is his way of dealing with it. We know he has bad dreams about it.
"He has twinges in his sleep and wakes up and checks himself. I hope he will not remember it in a few years, but we are making him a scrapbook so we can show him."
Liza and her husband, Daniel's father, Michael Harrison, hope that by sharing their story, they will bring about a change in the law.
Liza says: "If we can change the law, he will be a little hero. He has been very brave and very strong. He has been much stronger than me.
"We just do not want this to happen to anybody else."
6:03am Tuesday 10th April 2007
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