When she was a teen in Mexico, a kitchen accident left Nahomi Barragan-Carmona with burns that nearly killed her, but after treatment at Shriners Children’s Northern California, the accident put her on a trajectory to become a life-saving physician herself.
Nearly two decades after her care at Shriners Children’s Northern California, Nahomi Barragan-Carmona, M.D., recently returned to the world’s leading pediatric burn hospital to learn more about advanced skills in burn treatment from the medical team that saved her life.
Local Hospital Lacked Burn Expertise
Nineteen years ago, when Dr. Barragan-Carmona was a teenager, she was in the kitchen at home when something unexpected ignited, leaving Nahomi with burns over 70% of her body. While the details of the accident remain a blur, Nahomi remembers the shock of realizing her own injuries and witnessing her mother’s burn injuries as well.
Her father rushed her and her mother to the nearest hospital in Rosarito, where they transferred her to the main hospital in Tijuana. There doctors told her father that they could not save his daughter’s life. Luckily for her family, Nahomi’s uncle was a firefighter who connected her father to the burn center at Shriners Children’s Northern California. To get her there, her family hired an ambulance to take her to San Diego, and from there she was flown to Shriners Children’s in Sacramento.
World-Class Burn Care at Shriners Children's
Nahomi’s uncle understood that the burn center, now called the Neil Reitman Pediatric Burn Institute at Shriners Children’s Northern California, was one of the world's leading pediatric burn research and treatment programs. While he didn’t have all the details, he understood the center offered all aspects of burn care – from initial management, critical care and wound coverage – to rehabilitation, inpatient care and reconstruction.
When the young Dr. Barragan-Carmona arrived with her father, not only were they embraced by the team at the most advanced pediatric burn center in the West, they were met by one of the world’s most preeminent burn physicians and researchers, David Greenhalgh, M.D.
Dr. Greenhalgh, who was then chief of burns at Shriners Children’s Northern California and is now chief emeritus, told her father, “Don’t worry, she’s going to be fine, we treat burns more severe than this and we are going to take good care of her.”
The teenage Dr. Barragan-Carmona was a patient at Shriners Children’s Northern California for about three months, where she received multiple skin grafts, intense physical therapy, and custom-made pressure garments to support healing. She also worked with a child life specialist who helped her grapple with what had happened to her.
Her father kept a diary during her recovery, recording many details of what happened. What came through was the patient-centered, multi-disciplinary approach to care that his daughter received at Shriners Children’s.
One diary entry said, “The physical scars don’t even matter if you know that your child is alive, and she is healthy and she is emotionally healthy. Here, they take care of everything.”
