I was gasping for air as a nurse helped me out of the hospital bed and into a wheelchair.
While being taken to have my first shower since the accident, I caught sight of my reflection in a mirror and instantly recoiled.
It looked like I’d been in a fight, as my face was incredibly swollen and sore with skin peeling across my jaw and neck. I couldn’t even open my eyes properly through all the puffiness.
Instinctively, I turned away from the mirror in horror. In fact, I felt so upset by what I looked like that I ended up asking hospital staff to take down all the mirrors in my room.
I literally couldn’t face the trauma staring back at me.
One fire breathing accident changed my life forever. But I refuse to let it define me.
I grew up in Lancashire and have been dancing since the age of four – ballet, tap, ballroom, freestyle, you name it.
At the age of five, I started competing professionally, then eventually going to auditions for gigs like charity or corporate events where I’d dance on stage.
That’s where I’d meet other performers who would do specialist acts like fire dancing or breathing, which I thought was really cool. So I asked them to teach me.
We started off with the basics. Safety was the number one priority and I always took that very seriously. It meant properly checking equipment and surroundings.
Through a lot of careful guidance, I came up with a fire routine that I was really proud of – including lighting batons, rhythmically twirling them around and then fire breathing too.
I added this to my repertoire and started getting bookings, which I was doing for about a year and a half before I got a fire dancing gig at a charity event in Chicago on 1 April 2018.
On the actual day, I did all of my usual safety checks – like making sure there was enough space to perform, the air conditioning was turned off, all my equipment was stored and I had a damp towel ready in case of emergencies – before the event started.
As the night progressed, I was nervous for my turn to get on stage. But once I lit my fire sticks and started swirling them around, the adrenaline kicked in and so did my excitement.
Then, during my finale act of fire breathing, I took a deep breath in and suddenly fire blew back up into my face. It turns out, someone had turned the air conditioning vent on over the course of the evening so it was an accident waiting to happen.
It all happened very quickly so I don’t really remember the exact details but I recall intense heat and searing pain. The shocked crowd instantly knew that it wasn’t part of the act.
I instantly went into survival mode and picked up a wet cloth to pat the flames out. Then I went backstage, where I eventually jumped into an ambulance.
The rest of the night was a bit of a blur because I was sedated for the intense pain so I was in and out of consciousness. When I woke up, I was in intensive care at the burns unit in Cook County Hospital in Chicago.
The swelling felt suffocating, so I was struggling to breathe and I needed an oxygen mask. At that point, there wasn’t much they could do to ease the burn except to let the healing process start to happen.
So I stayed in that hospital for about a month, where my skin would bubble up and try to heal itself. All the hospital staff were really lovely, especially when I asked for all the mirrors in my room to be removed.
I couldn’t bring myself to see what I looked like in a mirror because I didn’t recognise the face I now had. It felt beyond traumatic.
By the time I flew back to the UK, scar tissue started to grow into a keloid tumour so it took over most of my face to the point where you couldn’t see my neck.
Ever since then, I’ve had treatments to treat this tumour – like liquid nitrogen or steroid injections, and even a form of chemotherapy. Six years on, it’s been an intense journey that I’ll have to continue to monitor for the rest of my life.
When I look back on the accident and how it’s irrevocably changed my life, I know it’s made me who I am today.
I truly understand what life is about now so I take each day by the horns. I value life so much more because I almost lost it all.
As a result, I’m very open about the accident and my recovery. That’s why I decided to post about it on social media ever since I was in hospital.
These posts caught the attention of campaigner Katie Piper, who was attacked with acid by her ex-boyfriend in 2008. She was so reassuring to me at the time and we stayed in touch ever since.
Then about two years ago, she reached out to me and said she was putting together a collection of stories for her UnSeen series and she wondered if I wanted to write for it. That’s how my book, In My Skin, came about – which documents my journey to feeling comfortable in my own skin.
I really hope the book helps others going through what I did to accept themselves for who they are now, not for a version of themselves that they’ve lost. It’s down to them to decide how they choose to grow.
When I look in the mirror now – don’t get me wrong – there are still times when I feel down or insecure. I’m only human.
But I can accept who I am today, in all its glory.
Finally, I’m happy in my own skin – and that’s really all I can do.
As told to James Besanvalle.
In My Skin: Learning to Love your Perfectly Imperfect Life by Sophie Lee is out in hardback on 18 April 2024 (SPCK Publishing)
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