Then-3-year-old Mia Schley was visiting her grandparents with her family when it happened. Mia had been inside taking a nap. Everyone else was outside, frying chicken wings for the upcoming meal.
When Mia awoke, she ran outside to join the rest of her family – and tripped over the extension cord powering the fryer. As she fell, she knocked the table over and upended the entire vat of deep frying oil all over her body.
Mia’s mother, Ainsley Schley, froze in the moment, completely unsure of what to do. She could only hear the sound of Mia’s piercing screams and stare helplessly at her daughter’s body.
“When I saw her body all of her skin was gone – I could see she was burned from head to toe. It was the worst sight you could possibly imagine on your own child,” Schley recalled. “Her hands were burned the worst, they didn’t have very much skin left on them.”
Mia was immediately taken to the hospital where she was kept incubated for a month and given strong drugs to numb the pain. She had burned over 60% of her body.
The doctors had to wait another few weeks before they could proceed with skin graft surgery to help Mia heal. Grafts from the backs of her legs were taken to treat the larger parts of her body that had been ravaged by the oil.
Now, two years after the traumatic incident, five-year-old Mia has since learned to live a normal life, just like any other child her age. After she relearned to walk in physical therapy, Mia even went as far as learning to play team sports and dance ballet.
Schley was worried that Mia would carry her burns around as a burden and feel embarrassed to show them to others. But on the contrary, “[Mia] dealt with it really well considering everything she went through, she has the most amazing personality and is beyond amazing.”
Mia now tells everyone that her burn scars are “beautiful.”
