Burn Victim Returns Home

Gulfport, MS (April 4, 2017) – John Harrison Doucet came home today to the family, friends and Gulf waters he loves after miraculously surviving an electrical shock that burned him to the bone.

The 20-year-old sailor’s tight-knit family thought several times they would lose him, but he has pulled through over the last seven months at the Joseph M. Still Burn Center in Augusta, Ga.

By all accounts, family support helped save John Harrison’s life. Visits from his siblings never failed to lift his spirits. The Coast and sailing communities also poured on the support, with businesses holding fund-raisers and individuals contributing to help cover medical and travel expenses.

He suffered third- and fourth-degree burns over 75 percent of his body. John Harrison was parking his sailboat at the Gulfport Yacht Club when a line from the mast came into contact with an overhead power line while his hand was on the trailer. First-responders thought he would die, they said at the time.

He was airlifted to the JMS hospital in Jackson, then transferred to JMS Augusta, the nation’s largest burn center. His stepmother, Katie Achenbach-Doucet, said John Harrison anticipated the flight home “like a kid at Christmas. John Harrison is just so excited.”

He will have a brief respite in Gulfport before returning to JMS to be fitted for prosthetic limbs. His right arm and both legs had to be amputated because of his injuries.

Source: Sun Herald