KENDALL, Fla. – Aleida Bello has been hospitalized at Kendall Regional Medical Center for nearly a month. A propane gas tank was leaking in her kitchen, so when she turned on the stove it ignited a massive flash fire. She suffered third-degree burns all over her body.
Bello, who has seven grandchildren and three children, has survived sepsis, pneumonia, and pneumothorax. The fighter is no longer on a ventilator and she has made attempts to communicate with her daughter, Jozenia Bello.
“I did this thing that she does with my son. She will tickle you and say ‘I want it from here!’ And I did it to her and she smiled. I cried from how much joy I had that I knew she was there. I knew she was listening. I knew she remembered.”
Jozenia Bello said her father suffers from Alzheimer’s and dementia. She said he depended a lot on her mother, a licensed optician who remains in the trauma unit and still has a long road to recovery in the hospital and over a year of treatment and therapies ahead.
“What they were doing was using cadaver skin to protect her skin, so they could continuously clean because the burning went so deep. Unfortunately, there’s a lot of risk of infection because of how much her skin is injured. They finally got to do some skin graphs on her arm with her actual skin.”
Jozenia Bello set up a GoFundMe page saying the flash fire blew through windows, hurricane-proof shutters, and launched items as far as 20 feet away from her parent’s apartment in Kendall.
“This life-threatening event puts her at risk to even return to work.”