Generation Health

Marissa Renee Shipp sings— about being a burn survivor.

By Aline Lindemann

She wowed rap icon P. Diddy as a contestant on MTV’s hip, hit reality series Starmaker. She recently blew away a gaggle of Hollywood elite at a post-Grammy Awards party. And she routinely electrifies crowds of thousands with her larger-than-life voice, in concerts all over the country. But tonight, Marissa Renee Shipp, hailed by pop pundits as the next big thing, is captivating a much smaller crowd. She stands now on stage in a Scottsdale ballroom, wearing a slinky blue dress, her signature curls spilling over her slender shoulders, addressing this group of 500 at a black tie fundraiser for Arizona’s Foundation for Burns and Trauma. It’s dead quiet out there as Shipp wraps up her story.

“I was ashamed of my scars, and kids made fun of me,” she’s saying, her breathy voice thickening. “But now I’m proud to tell people that I’m a burn survivor. You’ve got to hold your head up high and do what you dream.”

There isn’t a dry eye in the place.

Both “Follow Your Dreams,” the pop-flavored, get-up-and-go song she’s just sung, and the solemn story she’s followed it with are classic Marissa Renee Shipp. But they’re not schtick designed to garner attention for her fledgling career in an already crowded pop music scene. Shipp takes her role as burn survivor seriously, devoting a solid chunk of her time in the limelight to promoting the Foundation’s Camp Courage, a place amid the Prescott pines where other burn survivors are aided and celebrated.

Shipp, born and raised in Phoenix, knows how much kids who’ve been burned need that kind of celebration; she’s been a burn survivor herself since she was barely a year old. Toddling about in her walker in the kitchen of her childhood home, the eleven-month-old caught sight of a cord hanging down from the counter. She gave it a tug, pulling down a pot full of boiling grease. Shipp sustained third degree burns on her face and right arm.

“It could have been so much worse,” Shipp says today. “I could have died.”

She’s developed a sense of humor about her scars. “I have the map of the world on my arm!” Shipp laughs, before proudly rolling up her sleeve and pointing to an irregularly shaped blemish on her forearm. “See, here’s Australia!”

A recent showdown with a Hollywood photographer reminded her how important it is to show off her “map,” and to speak up on behalf of other young survivors. When proofs from Shipp’s first professional photo shoot came back to her with her burn scars Photoshopped out, she flipped, then issued a strongly worded email insisting that the scars be put right back where they belonged.

“I said to the photographer, ‘Why would you do that?’” Shipp recalls. “These scars are a part of who I am. I’ve been a burn survivor all my life!’”

Shipp’s brash confidence is serving her well lately. Since her appearance on Starmaker, agents have come calling; she’s recently worked with record biz fat cats like Rodney Jones (who’s produced albums for Destiny’s Child and Michael and Janet Jackson) and vocal coach to the stars Romeo Johnson. Her self-titled first CD is set to drop later this month, and Shipp has her sights set on a big-screen acting career.

“My dad is the reason I’m so confident as an entertainer,” she says, gesturing excitedly and slapping her knee as she tells stories about her father standing up in front of his middle school class singing Michael Jackson songs and making the girls cry. “I said, ‘I want to do that!’” Shipp remembers. “‘I want to make the girls cry!’”

Shipp also credits her father with inspiring her to give something back to others. He sent her to spend time with young burn survivors at the Arizona Burn Center at Maricopa Medical Center, where she was treated as a baby. It was an 
experience, she says, that changed her forever.

“I knew I wanted to do something for them,” she explains. “I wanted to sing to them.” After one of these visits, and in a sudden burst of inspiration, she sat down to write a song. In about ten minutes, that tune, Follow Your Dreams, was complete. It’s gone on to have thousands of hits on iTunes—good news for Camp Courage, to which Shipp is giving fifty percent of the single’s proceeds. “That song just flowed out of me,” Shipp says, “and before I knew it, I was in Prescott at Camp Courage, up there on stage, singing and crying and telling my story.”

It’s a story the Camp Courage kids can relate to. After sustaining excruciating treatments and sometimes dozens of surgeries, these burn survivors want to talk to someone else who’s lived through it, according to Nan Edens, director of the Foundation.

“Camp Courage is a place where kids can enjoy mental, emotional, and spiritual challenges that are so much fun, they don’t even realize that they’re in therapy,” says Edens of the camp, which is staffed by social workers, a burn psychologist, child life specialists, surgeons and nurses, paramedics, a ropes crew, and lifeguards, ninety-nine percent of whom are volunteers. There’s no fee for the campers or their families, and thanks to year-round fundraising and generous donors, Edens is proud to say Camp Courage has never had to turn away a child who wanted to attend.

Edens is equally proud of Shipp’s presence at last year’s camp. “Never before in the twenty-year history of the camp have the kids stood up, one by one, and told how they got burned,” she reports. “This camp has always been all about forgetting all of that. But Marissa got them started, and once that happened, the stories and the tears just kept flowing. It was very healing for everyone.”

Telling your story and showing your scars is a necessity, Shipp believes. “My parents told me that we all have scars,” she says. “Some are just more obvious than others. So when kids tell me that they don’t know how to handle someone teasing them or looking at them funny, I tell them to speak up. Tell your story. It’ll make all the difference in the world.”

To register for Camp Courage’s summer session, call 602-230-2041 or visit azburn.org. Registration deadline is April 1, 2010.

Scalding -- not fire -- is the top cause of burns

When people think of burns, they usually think of fire, according to Nan Edens, director of Arizona’s Foundation for Burns and Trauma. But the top cause of burns is actually scalding. A scald injury occurs when contact with hot liquid or steam damages one or more layers of skin. According to Edens, the most frequent victims are young children (75 percent of all burns to young children are scalds), older adults, and people with disabilities.

Children’s natural curiosity, limited understanding of danger, limited ability to react to hot contact, and thin skin result in a deeper, more severe burn. With older adults, reduced mobility and agility and limited ability to feel heat due to health conditions or medication can result in permanent and life-threatening injuries. The most common sites of scald injury are kitchen and bath.

“One of the easiest ways to prevent kids from getting too close to a pot of boiling water is to mark off a ‘kid-free zone’ around the stove with blue painter’s tape,” advises Edens. “And don’t use tablecloths. When kids tug on them, hot liquids—even a hot cup of coffee—can spill on them and cause a burn.”

Other safe kitchen tips: use spill-resistant travel mugs, turn pot handles inward, keep electrical cords from small appliances tightened up. In the bathroom, take care that bathing water isn’t too hot. Adjust the thermostat on a water heater to be at or below 120 degrees, and consider installing a non-slip bath mat. “If the bath water is too hot,” Edens says, “a child or elderly person can’t jump out of the tub as easily as the rest of us can.”