Written by Liam Bridgeman on April 21, 2023
Everyone has a day that they will never forget...a day that changed your life. Some people remember every detail of their day.
Candy Noltensmeyer doesn’t remember much about her day, but Sunday, Feb. 7, 1993, 30 years ago, her life changed forever.
At the time, Candy Gudde was a confident 17-year-old trying to pave her way through her junior year of high school. She was confident, spunky and outgoing.
She was living with her family in a trailer on their farm in the small town of Edna, Kansas.
Earlier in the week, Candy had been sick with the flu.
On Sunday she woke up around 5:00 a.m. to get ready for work, just as she did every Sunday. The diner that she worked for, owned by her aunt, opened at 6:30 a.m. so that the “old timers” could get coffee before church.
She went about her normal routine. Get up, shower.
But that’s all she remembers.
From her mother’s account, the accident happened toward the end of the shower. She could tell by the texture of Candy’s soft, clean hair.
Candy’s brother, who was 12 at the time, heard Candy scream. He, along with his 8-year-old brother, ran to their parent's room on the opposite side of the trailer.
After several failed attempts to reach Candy on the other side of the door, Candy’s father, Robert, used his body as a battering ram to bust down the door.
Inside, the family found Candy at the bottom of the tub and hot steaming water from the shower burning her legs and arms.
At some point during her shower, Candy fell unconscious, possibly an aftereffect from the flu. When her parents busted into the bathroom, the hot water was turned all the way to the right, the cold, turned all the way to the left; it was off.
Candy was in dire trouble.
Her parents scrabbled to find something to wrap around her body. They found a t-shirt, one of Candy’s favorite shirts.
They rushed into town to the local hospital where they were told Candy had to be airlifted to the Hillcrest Medical Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
The sun hadn’t yet risen in the Kansas sky. Candy remembers how dark it was. Then she remembers thinking ‘I’m not going to fit’ as the doctors wheeled her toward the helicopter. Then, the darkness of the morning sky crept into her mind.
“It all happened so fast,” she said.
That was the last thing that Candy remembers of the day that changed her life.
Candy spent the next four weeks in the ICU burn unit in Tulsa.
This is where she found out that 60% of her body had suffered from third degree burns. These burns extend into the fat layer that is underneath the dermis, or the thick outer layer of skin.
With the severity of the injuries, the next stop in Candy’s recovery process is one of the clearest memories she has of her time in the hospital, debridement. This is a procedure of treating a wound and thoroughly cleaning it, removing dead tissue, debris and infections.
Once she arrived in the ICU, Candy was wheeled to a large spacious room. In the middle of the room is a tub and above it, a hoist.
A team of five to eight nurses heaved an unconscious Candy into the hoist and lowered her into the tub.
As Candy was surrounded by the nurses, they all began scrubbing her scorched body.
One patch of melted skin at a time. Her skin, covered in dirt, infection and dead tissue. All of it had to be removed. With every scrub, more and more of the outer layer of skin that once covered Candy’s body was gone.
At some point during the debridement, Candy woke up. The pain was too much for her to bear.
“Please give me anything. Just give me more of anything,” Candy cried as she pleaded with the nurse. The pain was excruciating.
“Honey if we give you anything more, it will kill you,” the nurse said as tears began flooding her own eyes.
After debridement, it was determined that Candy had contracted an infection. No one told her, but her life was in danger.
According to the National Library of Medicine, significant burn injuries place the patient in a “state of immunosuppression” which halts the response of the immune system, places burn survivors in a high-risk state for infections.
These infections, according to an Oxford academic journal of Clinical Infectious Diseases, are the most common cause of death following a burn injury.
Candy was compromised and the injury became another dire situation.
Her family was concerned, and changes to their own lives had to happen for them to be close to Candy. Before the injury, Candy’s dad worked a full-time job to support the family, her mother was attending college and her younger brothers were in school.
Soon after the injury, that changed. Candy’s mother quit school, and her brothers were split amongst the extended Gudde family so they could both continue to go to school while their parents tended to Candy.
The unfortunate fact is the medical center that Candy was housed in was almost two hours away from the Gudde’s home in Edna. Their lives stopped as they ensured that Candy’s life could resume.
One day in the ICU, Candy’s favorite nurse Frank was paid a visit by his wife and young daughter, of about 5 years old.
Frank talked with his wife after he wheeled a bandaged Candy to the side of a room.
Candy had always been good with kids, as she babysat for years. She didn’t think anything of it.
When Candy tried talking to Frank’s daughter, the girl shrank back into her mother, as if she was pushed back by a gust of wind. She was scared of Candy. Candy was dangerous to her.
Candy was just as frightened.
“Am I a danger?”
“Why am I dangerous?”
There was nothing that she could do. Candy was not a danger to the child. Candy suffered from some of the most severe burn injuries a person can survive from. The child just feared her because she was bandaged.
Candy didn’t take offense, after all she was just a kid. But Candy did realize something through that interaction. A change did happen to her, and people were going to see her differently.
Four weeks after her injury while she was in the ICU, in the middle of the night Candy was rushed out of her ICU room and taken to a regular room in the hospital. Someone was in serious need of her room.
Candy’s mom rushed to get all of their things together so that they could be moved.
In her new room, Candy spent another two and a half weeks recovering from her injuries and trying to gain weight. Before she was in the hospital, Candy weighed around 120 pounds. During her time there, she weighed around 90 pounds.
She eventually got well enough to return home. She wasn’t yet well enough to go back to high school.
After another two weeks at home, it was time for Candy’s first day back at school. She was scared, but also excited. Scared because she didn’t know how people were going to react. Excited because she could finally see her friends again.
To go back out into the world, Candy had to take special care of her body so that her skin grew back properly. Taking preemptive steps against hypertrophic scaring was the priority.
To school she had to wear special skin garments. They were purple, allowing Candy, as she said, to "channel her inner 80s Madonna”.
Candy wanted to be invisible, or as invisible as her garments would allow. Unlike the little girl that Candy had scared a few weeks before, Candy couldn’t collapse into her mother. She couldn’t run away.
Candy’s time in school changed after her injury. People didn’t know what to say to her and her parents tightened their grip.
Her scars were more than the physical blemishes that people could see from the outside. Like many burn survivors, her injuries were affecting her mental health. They were affecting the way she saw herself.
“It was an emotional state,” Candy said.
She started holding back. Before the injury she was an outgoing person that was in on every conversation. After, though, she was afraid. Afraid that she couldn’t just have a normal conversation with someone without them bringing up her injury.
The injury was just an event. An event, not a characteristic. Candy’s injury does not define her. It changed her, but it is not her.
Over time, Candy regained the confidence she’d had her whole life. She began seeing herself the way she actually was, as a beautiful, strong young woman.
Candy is lucky.
Many burn survivors have PTSD because of their injuries. Because of her lack of memory, Candy does not.
Though, Candy still has scars. Physical scars. Some of her burns have caused the hair to not grow back on her arms and legs. She still sees her scars every day. She still feels the weight of everyone's stares.
But she’s grown since her injury.
Things happen within our lives. Big things. We can let those moments define us. Let them rot away at us like mold slowly takes over a loaf of bread. Or we can accept the events in our lives and grow from them. Learn how we can grow as human beings through our experiences.
Thirty years later, Candy has a doctorate in communication and is a communication professor at Western Carolina University.
In her black sleeveless shirt, she stands confidently in front of a class of over 30 students. Her mind isn’t on her scars. Instead, her mind is on sharing her story with her students. Not for sympathy, but for knowledge.
Candy’s injury changed the way she saw the world.
Change is something we all face. Candy uses her story to show students there is beauty in change, just as she learned 30 years ago.
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Disclaimer: The stories featured on this website are personal accounts shared by individuals from the burn community. Each burn injury, recovery journey, and healing process is unique. These stories are meant to offer connection, insight, and hope but are not intended as medical advice. What worked for one person may not be appropriate for others. The perspectives shared in these stories do not necessarily represent the views of Phoenix Society for Burn Survivors. If you have medical questions or concerns, please consult a qualified healthcare professional.