A mum was left with third-degree burns and a permanent scar after a seven-year-old hot water bottle burst on her lap.
Karen O’Brien has urged others to “never ever” use them, claiming that her skin “just melted away”. The 52-year-old retail worker suffered severe burns when her hot water bottle burst on her lap in March 2024.
The horrific injury caused her skin to blister and peel away with her trousers, leaving “holes in her skin” that got worse by the hour. The mum, who lives with her husband Daniel, 64 and kids in Melton Mowbray, Leicestershire, visited Leicester Royal Infirmary Hospital following the incident.
Doctors were able to remove layers of damaged skin to prevent infection, and the burn left her with a large scar on her thigh and permanent skin discolouration. Karen explained how the emotional toll of the accident her two weeks later, as she found herself bursting into tears unexpectedly, though over time she came to accept her scar and did not feel self-conscious.
Now, the mum-of-two is extremely cautious around hot items and urges others to avoid hot water bottles. Karen told PA Real Life: “When I first could see the skin, I had blisters coming up straight away, and then you could see where the skin just melted away.
“There were holes in the skin but every hour it was looking worse and worse and worse. At first I thought, ‘OK, I know I’ve done some damage here’ but it didn’t look that bad.
“After this, I found out you are supposed to replace (hot water bottles) after around a year, and a lot of them have the date they were manufactured on them… mine might have burst because it was so old.”
In March 2024, Karen had shingles on her scalp and it left her with a lot of pain down the side of her neck and her shoulder. She used the hot water bottle to help combat the pain.
As usual, she boiled the kettle and let it stand for around one minute, and filled her water bottle to the top with the boiling water. As she sat down on the sofa, the hot water bottle, which she had owned for around seven years, burst open on her lap.
She said: “It was a complete accident rather than a design flaw… the boiling water went all over my legs so I jumped up and screamed and every time my trousers touched my leg, the pain was incredible. I’ve never known pain like it, it was horrendous.
“I pulled my trousers down, and as I did that, I could see the skin coming away with my trousers. I didn’t know what to do, (I) had never never done anything like this before.”
Fortunately Karen’s neighbour is a nurse, so she called her and she came over and told her to get into the bath. Around five hours later, her neighbour took her to hospital as she was losing so much skin and Karen said it began to look “hideous”.
At hospital, a nurse had to remove surface layers of skin to prevent infection and put dressing on it. She had to go to her GP every few days to have it redressed, and as time went on she lost “quite a large area of skin”, while it took over a month to fully heal.
Around two weeks after the incident, Karen’s emotions came to the surface. “I couldn’t stop crying, and one minute I’d be fine, and the next minute, I just burst into tears,” Karen explained.
“My daughter said I was in shock but mentally I found it very hard.” On top of this, Karen, in her job at the time, claimed she did not receive sick pay, meaning she could “not afford to have time off” to recover.
So, Karen’s sister Dawn set up a GoFundMe in the hope of raising some extra money, so Karen could take some time off work. In total, the GoFundMe raised around £60, which Karen said she was “grateful for” as it “covered a day’s wage” for her to have off.
Karen now has a “big scar” and skin discolouration on the area – if she is cold, it often goes “bright red”. She added: “I thought I would be really conscious going on holiday later that year but I thought, well, no one knows me anyway, so I stopped caring.”
However, she said she is now “so wary” of dealing with anything hot, whether it be making herself a hot drink or cooking. “I can’t deal with hot things any more, I can’t bear it,” Karen said.
“I’m very careful now… if the kettle has just boiled, I won’t pour it out straight away. “I have to wait until there’s no more steam and the water has settled down before I go near it.”
To people who use hot water bottles, she said: “Never, ever use them, especially don’t give them to children, they are too dangerous. If you are desperate to use one, just use hot water out the tap but I would never use water from the kettle.
“My husband’s bought me a battery-powered fleece that keeps me warm so I don’t need to use a hot water bottle. Even the nurse at the hospital said that she has a lot of children coming in that have been burnt from the microwavable things you heat up to keep you warm, so you have to be so careful.”
To find out more about Karen’s GoFundMe, click here.