When Tilly Sawford, now nine, was just 15 months old, she fell into a scalding hot bath in her home. She’d been climbing on a beanbag next to the bath. Her older brother had accidentally turned the hot tap on, and because the home’s water boiler was malfunctioning, the water reached a scalding temperature very quickly.
Tilly slipped from the beanbag and fell directly into the bath.
Her mother, Emma, recalled the moment, “I heard a scream and ran [back] upstairs. Tilly was in the bathtub. She must have leaned over and fallen in. Her eyes rolled back and she went unconscious from the pain. I picked her up straight away and pulled the plug out. Her skin was coming off in my hands.
“I think I started to go into shock, I couldn’t speak properly, it was so awful.”
The Sawford family rushed Tilly to the hospital, where doctors were initially uncertain if Tilly would even survive the third-degree burns that had ravaged 86% of her body.
Tilly, thankfully, made it through the night and ended up spending the next six months in intensive care to receive treatment for her burns.
She fought off death five different times and underwent almost 500 surgeries, receiving skin grafts – and even shark cartilage and cow collagen – to repair her skin, but the injuries were too extensive. Tilly’s doctors had to remove her right leg and they didn’t think she would ever walk again.
Tilly has since been fitted with a prosthetic, which she calls her “robot leg,” and is determined to learn how to walk on her own.
“She want[s] to be able to chase people around,” Emma explained.
Despite everything she had running against her, Tilly just took her first steps – by herself – earlier this week.
“It was an enormous moment,” Emma described, “Up to then she’d put her hand against the hospital rail or wall for support but then she just stood on her own. She got a huge grin on her face and looked so determined. …we just hope this is the start of things to come.”
