South Carolina woman loses hand after freak accident with hair dryer

A South Carolina lost her hand in a freak hair-drying accident and was forced to leave her cherished career as a dog groom due to the gruesome injury.

Mary Wilson was drying her hair before bed at her James Island home when she passed out while the dryer was still running on high power on Feb. 7, according to 15 News.

She lay on the floor for about 20 minutes when her partner found her on top of the hair dryer.

“She’s telling me, ‘Your hand, your hand,’” Wilson explained.

“I look at my hand. I don’t even register that’s a part of me. It doesn’t even look recognizable.”

She was rushed to the hospital and doctors were forced to amputate her hand and wrist due to the severe nerve damage caused by the hair dryer’s heat.

Wilson believed a shock from the appliance caused her to pass out.

She claimed the blow dryer did not have an automatic shut-off, like other hot hair tools, and if there was one, she may still have her hand.

“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 said.

“If it did, then maybe my injuries wouldn’t have been so bad.”

Before the the life-altering injury, Wilson was a dog groomer a career she was forced to give up now that she only has one hand, and is unsure if she’ll ever be able to work with man’s best friend again.

“It really kind of 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,” she told WSFA.

Despite the injury, she’s trying to remain positive and is looking forward to 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? Losing my hand may be something that changes who I am, but that doesn’t mean that it defines me on everything,” Wilson told the outlet.

Wilson has been moved by the support she received, calling it “incredible.”

“It’s support that I never even knew that I had, and it definitely meant a lot,” she said, told 15 News.

Wilson shared that a local restaurant, Bohemian Bull, is planning on donating some of the proceeds they receive from an upcoming cornhole tournament to help her recovery efforts.