A 4-year-old girl who endured severe burns on her face and body will spend the next ten years undergoing reconstructive surgeries.
Rawkee Hunt suffered third-degree burns in a farming accident in Utah, where burning embers blew onto her, smoldering her face and body.
Courageous Rawkee will now face a decade-long round of surgeries to repair the damage done to her skin.
Her mother, Megan, said that despite her injuries, Rawkee remains positive in life.
“She sits in front of the mirror every morning and she never feels bad about herself. She never feels ugly,” Megan shared.
“Seeing her enduring this challenge is empowering to me – she is so inspiring.”
Rawkee was playing on a ranch where her father Shay had just finished burning fence lines when the accident happened.
“She was playing on the road and Shay was loading up his tools,” Megan recalled. “He heard her screaming.
“The wind had picked up the intense heat from the freshly burnt embers and pushed the heat on to her face. She was never actually on fire.
“He couldn’t see anything. He started pulling her clothes off and he saw her sweater melting into her skin and her face was melting.”
Rawkee was rushed to a hospital in Las Vegas before she was airlifted to the University of Utah hospital in Salt Lake City.
The young girl underwent numerous surgeries and surgeons took skin from her thighs and rib cage to cover burns on her face, legs, hands, and arm.
“She has swelled up to twice her size because her endocrine system has collapsed,” Megan said.
“She is not stable enough for surgery. As soon as she is stable, we will start her reconstruction process.”
Rawkee will spend the next ten years undergoing multiple surgeries to reconstruct her face and heal her burns.
“She will have five medical balloons inserted into the healthy tissue on her face – just above the muscle and just below the skin and they will be sewn into her skin,” Megan said.
“The balloons will stretch the healthy skin and then doctors will go in and remove all of the scar tissue and then they will stretch that healthy skin over the wound. They are estimating that face reconstruction will take three to five years.
“We will then start that same procedure on the rest of her body and in eight to ten years she should be completely restored.
“Then she will have cosmetic surgeries over the years to replace the things that will have been lost.”
Megan added: “She will lose two thirds of her hair as we stretched her scalp. She will have to have hair plug surgery and her eyebrows will have to be restored. Her lips and nose will have to be injected with fat to get them back to normal.”
Shay and Megan have set up a GoFundMe page to cover their medical bills.
“We’ve got ten years ahead of us of medical bills. Thankfully we both work and we are financially stable but we would like to raise money to put in a savings account for Rawkee.
“I don’t want this to be a burden for her.”
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