A woman has issued a serious warning to others after a freak accident while drying her hair led to her hand and wrist being amputated.
On 7 February, Mary Wilson, from James Island, South Carolina, was drying her hair in her bathroom when she suddenly passed out.
"The way I [fell] on top of the dryer, like it was under me, and I was in a weird, contorted placement and the dryer was still running," she told WCIV.
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Her partner found her about 20 minutes later, as Mary continued to say: "She’s telling me, 'Your hand, your hand.'
"I look at my hand. I don’t even register that’s a part of me. It doesn’t even look recognisable."
She was then rushed to hospital with third degree burns 'all the way to the bone' and severe nerve damage, leading doctors to have to amputate her left hand and wrist.
As for what possibly caused her to faint, Mary believes that it could have been a shock from the appliance.
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Because the hair dryer didn't have an automatic shut-off, the extreme heat continued to blow on her hand while she was unconscious - which she has said should have a feature which automatically shuts off the appliance once it reaches to dangerous temperatures.
"You see it with hair straighteners and flat irons — they do have that ceramic plate that once it gets to a certain temperature, it turns off," she says.
"If it did, then maybe my injuries wouldn’t have been so bad."
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Since the accident, Mary has had to get used to having one hand - which hasn't been easy.
“The biggest thing is not being able to do the simple things I want to do, or things take so much longer," she said.
"It really puts in perspective all the other issues that I was dealing with in my life six months ago are so insignificant to things that I’m having to go through now, or challenges that I’m going to have to be going through in the future."
Before the accident, Mary worked as a dog groomer, a position she has been forced to give up and is now unsure whether she'll be able to return to the job in the future.
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But she has been able to remain positive and is currently in the process of getting a prosthetic hand.
"I’m still going to live my life to the fullest. It’s just a hand. What is this, 10% of my body?" she says.
"Losing my hand may be something that changes who I am, but that doesn’t mean that it defines me on everything."
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She also says she's been moved by all the love and support she's received, calling it 'incredible.'
"It’s support that I never even knew that I had, and it definitely meant a lot." Mary said.
Bec Oakes