METH'S LEGACY: BURNS, RUINED LIVES

University Hospital Burn Unit Seeing More and More Victims of
Methamphetamine Labs

One in seven patients admitted to Denver's premier burn treatment center
last year was a confirmed or suspected casualty of methamphetamine labs.

Mangled hands. Maimed arms. Melted faces.

They're showing up at University Hospital with tragic regularity.

"There's a break in reality between wanting to make the drugs and realizing
what tremendous risk you are placing yourself in," said Paul Bauling,
director of the hospital's burn unit.

"You're going to damage and cook your brain when you use (meth), but you're
going to damage and cook your skin when you make it."

Methamphetamine has taken hold in Colorado, posing dangers never before
confronted in the drug world. Law enforcement officers throughout the state
are busting labs, many in residential neighborhoods, at a rate of more than
one a day.

Just two years ago, Bauling said, meth-related burns barely made a blip on
hospitals' patient loads. University logged only a handful of cases then.

But last year the numbers went up. Bauling estimated he and his burn team
colleagues treated a dozen patients who were known to be manufacturing
speed when their injuries occurred. Another dozen were likely involved in
the illegal activity but lied about what happened.

"Most people don't walk in the door and say, 'Oops, I got burned in a meth
lab,' " Bauling said.

Many patients are left at the emergency room alone, as the car that brought
them peels away. Others come in hours after their agony started, probably
so associates can clean up the labs.

Doctors treat patients the same, no matter how the burns occurred. They are
prohibited by confidentiality rules from calling police.

But those on the front lines at University want to get the message out:
"This is going to kill you. If it doesn't kill you, it's going to ruin the
rest of your life. . . . You may never be able to use your hands again. You
may never be able to put a hamburger in your mouth," Bauling said. "The
risk isn't worth the high."

Burn victims typically remain hospitalized for months, undergoing
excruciating treatment in hopes of restoring the use of their limbs and
affixing skin that can bend. Even after they are released, patients face
years of rehabilitation.

Twenty-six-year-old George H. had experienced pain in his life, but nothing
like what he found when he woke up with third- and fourth- degree burns
over 26 percent of his body.

The name on his hospital door said John Doe. George had been abandoned at
Lutheran Medical Center in Wheat Ridge by someone, he doesn't know who,
then flown to University. He'd been unconscious for eight days.

"It was hell," he said. "Being burned is the worst experience anyone can
suffer. I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy. I don't wish it on the people
who did this."

George, who asked that his last name be withheld because he wants no
contact with his past life, admits his burns were the result of his
involvement in methamphetamine.

But he says he wasn't cooking speed; he was dealing it.

George was burned in January 2000 after he says he tried to settle a debt
with his partner and get out of a business that had gutted his life. He was
taken to a cabin in Empire, he says, where one of his former associates
doused him with gasoline and lit a match.

That's the last thing he says he remembers.

When he came to University Hospital at the University of Colorado Health
Sciences Cente, George thought he was dead. He couldn't lift his head. His
eyes were burned shut. All he could see was white.

"I started screaming and hooting and hollering," he said. "And the nurses
came in and told me what had happened."

George's arms, chest and neck were rippled with burns. Flames had eaten his
face and ears, causing injuries that would later become infected and nibble
away at the tops of his lobes.

The rest of his upper body was saved by a cotton tank top.

Two years later, George's eyes shine through a face that has seen the
benefit of plastic surgery, but deep scars remain on his chest and arms.

He hopes his story will save someone else's life. What happened to him, he
says, saved his.

"I'd been tweaking for six years. I woke up every day for six years trying
to quit," he said.

Nine days before he was burned, he fell to the ground and made a deal with
God. "If I'm not out of this ---- in 10 days, strike me down with
lightning," George remembers thinking. "Be careful what you ask for. I got
what I asked for, a day early."

Still, the experience gave George the strength he'd lacked. On April 23,
he'll celebrate two years of freedom from drugs. He's completing a deferred
sentence stemming from his arrest on several drug-related charges and hopes
to become a drug counselor.

Registered nurse Kimberlee LaMothe is amazed when some patients come in for
clinics and admit they've returned to their old ways.

"You put a lot of time into them and you do a lot of teaching," she said.
"But some people will go back to the meth. They couldn't walk away."

Others, like George, learn from their past.

"This is the only reason I'm clean today," George said as he took off his
shirt to show his wounds. "This started out as simple using and turned into
me fighting for my life. . . . It can happen to anyone. That's the bottom line."