When Dana Csonka was 8 years old, a house fire left burn scars over 18 percent of her body, including her face, neck and arms. She recovered and returned to school, but her classmates were
merciless. “They would call me ‘blackie’ and ‘burnt crisp,’ ” she said. “I didn’t have any friends.”
Her nurses at Akron Children’s Hospital in Akron, Ohio, had a suggestion: to attend a nearby overnight camp for kids who had been burned. There, Csonka found community — she went back every summer for 10 years and made lifelong friends she is still in touch with now at age 37. “Just to be with other burn survivors who’ve been there and knew what I went through, how to deal with the
bullying,” she said. “At burn camp you don’t have that problem.”
Since the mid-1980s, the Aluminum Cans for Burned Children Burn Camp has been offering children with burn scars a week of relief — from looking different, from worrying about stares, from hiding their scars with long pants or sleeves. “They have a lot of emotional things that they go through, trying to fit back in with society with their scars,” said Becky Mundy, burn center education coordinator at Akron Children’s
Hospital. “At camp they can wear bathing suits and shorts and no one’s going to judge them...
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