This is a part of the Hot Topic podcast series from the Model Systems Knowledge Translation Center on Sexuality and Intimacy After Burn Injury. Jennifer Bell Matthews, burn survivor, discusses changes in skin sensation after burn injury and how those changes may affect sexuality and intimacy.

Jennifer Bell-Matthews

Sustained a Burn injury in 2010

So for me as far as my body is concerned, you know, when everything changes and you go to having scarring, it doesn’t feel quite the same. The way I sense touch was not the same. And with scar tissue you don’t really feel too much, it’s more of like a pressure kind of and that’s if someone’s really touching you pretty hard.

But as far as someone just caressing you, I couldn’t feel those types of touch. So moving forward as the injury got older, you know, touch changes. The way that I sense things has also changed. So that played a lot into me being sexually aroused as well, because all of a sudden I could feel things that I hadn’t felt before.

So it’s an interesting dynamic to compare, you know, what your body was like before being burned period and how you felt to being injured and not being able to feel to then it coming back alive and you still having those basic feelings of, you know, touch, the softness and the caressing and then it leading to, you know, sexual arousal.

Visit https://msktc.org/burn and get the answers you need from experts who conduct innovative and high-quality research, provide patient care, and work to improve the health and overall quality of life for people with burn injury. That’s https://msktc.org/burn.