Scarred but not stalled, Henderson teen overcomes burns to seize future

Two years ago, Kaysee Nitta was enveloped in a 20-foot-tall wall of fire that burned 90 percent of her body. For months, she had pain so intense she needed to sing through it to cope.

Now, at age 18, she’s a survivor. She’s largely over the pain and dreams of becoming a veterinarian.

Just after noon Saturday, Nitta shared her story at the annual Christmas party for patients past and present of the UMC Lions Burn Care Center. This year’s fest was at Three Square food bank’s North Pecos Road headquarters.

She talked about her pain in relation to her admiration for the medicine practiced at UMC’s burn unit, which is one of only 67 fully certified such units in the United States. The unit sees about 300 inpatients and around 1,000 outpatients each year.

“I was in the hospital three months and then off and on again for another four months,” she said. “But they brought me back to where I can still become the veterinarian I want to be.”

The pain from burns like Nitta’s can be excruciating. Doctors say just the air hitting exposed burns is enough to make grown men cry out.

But she remembered powerful medications she took and the times she and the burn unit nurses sang along with Taylor Swift’s “22” on Pandora to keep the focus off her pain.

So did Kaysee’s mom and grandmother. And a child-life specialist.

I don’t know about you/But I’m feeling 22/Everything will be all right/If you keep me next to you

The more Nitta talked about the pain involved in burn injuries, the more it was evident she could have had the Mormon Tabernacle Choir join her in the burn unit and it couldn’t have stopped all her cries.

“We sang every day for four months,” she said. “But music will only take you so far, distract you so much.”

Nurses say try to imagine someone daily changing the dressing on a burn, far, far beyond the worst sunburn or hot stove touch or rug rash you ever experienced.

Sometimes nurses clean a patient’s wounds of dead skin in a painful process called debridement; sometimes physicians do. A special knife that does the work looks like a cheese slicer.

Nitta was one of seven students hurt in 2014 at a bonfire held in celebration of students graduating from Henderson’s Basic High School. Such fires are illegal without a permit but are often carried out by young people in the desert.

“I know that was a mistake,” she said.

When a drum of fuel was thrown atop the bonfire, it exploded. So did the fire.

Nitta was the most seriously hurt.

“That drum of fuel of fuel shouldn’t have been left out there by somebody, either,” she said.

The students had to drive themselves to the hospital.

“I could see chunks of my legs hanging off,” Nitta said.

Incredibly, for a long time, Nitta didn’t suffer pain from where she was burned.

“My body went into shock and my nerves had been badly injured,” she said. “I still can’t feel my feet because my nerves were hurt so bad there.”

She was placed in a medically induced coma for more than two weeks to help her body cope with the shock. Doctors didn’t think she would live.

Multiple surgeries, particularly skin grafts, were necessary for months.

“I know I aged 10 years through all this,” said Shelly Nitta, who accompanied her daughter to the UMC party.

Cathy Downey, a UMC nurse who works with burn patients, said her duties are difficult. Few nurses can take the work for long because in working to help their patients, they can’t help but cause them pain, behavior at odds with their goals as caregivers.

“It is very hard,” Downey said. “But you get to see kids when they go back to school, when they can use their hands or feet again.”

Kimberly Grettum, a UMC child-life specialist, grew close to Nitta.

“It was so difficult for her as a teenager not to be able to do things for herself,” she said. “But she stayed positive. “

Nitta, now an excellent student at College of Southern Nevada, works at being positive, talking to burn support groups.

“Our lives aren’t over because we have some scars,” she said. ”I have scars all over and they don’t degrade who I am. I’m going to be a great vet.”

Nitta says she realizes how fragile life can be and how important it is to enjoy, say, a daybreak, when the sky above the mountains begins to bloom in crimsons, golds, jades and blues as the dawn pushes the darkness aside.

“Life is precious,” she said. “I realize life is a gift and it can be taken away so quickly. So I’m enjoying every day.”

Paul Harasim’s column runs Sunday, Tuesday and Friday in the Nevada section and Monday in the Health section. Contact him at pharasim@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-5273. Follow @paulharasim on Twitter.