It was a cool evening when Alan Fitzsimons decided he and his partner, Heather Price, would enjoy spending time beside their fire pit on their horse farm outside Lexington, Kentucky. On this night, something he’s done numerous times changed his life.
According to Fitzsimons, the fire would only stay lit for a few moments, and then it would sizzle out. He knew he had a gas can in the garage and thought that would help start the fire and keep it going.
“Literally as I poured, I saw a flame jump straight into the gas can and then it just exploded,” he shared. “I vividly remember that day. I was in a pair of shorts and a dry-fit T-shirt and some slides, all melted completely.
Price said he called her at work. “I’ll never forget the sound of sheer panic in his voice. ‘I need you to come home right now.’ I’m not great in an emergency situation, so the owner of the restaurant I worked at actually drove me home. We walk in and he’s standing there, in khaki shorts, pink on his skin, he smelled like fire, like burning. He was in shock and was already blistering.”
Fitzsimons had extinguished the fire in his backyard prior to returning into his house, patting the fire out with his hands. At one point, he realized some of the surrounding shrubbery and wooden structures were also on fire, which he extinguished with a fire extinguisher. It was only when he looked in the mirror after getting dressed that he realized the extent of his injuries.
Price recalls, “His legs had huge blisters. Once in the car, the first thing he does is light a cigarette! I said, ‘Put that damn thing out, you’re gonna blow us all up! You’re flammable right now!’”
Price drove Fitzsimons to the nearby hospital, and at that point he had begun to succumb to exhaustion and pain from his injuries. In total, Fitzsimons had sustained severe second and third degree burns throughout much of the front of his body. He was life flighted to the UofL Health – UofL Hospital – Burn Center.
“I remember being in the hospital in Paris, don’t remember getting into the helicopter,” he said. “I do remember getting out at UofL Hospital, and that was basically the last thing I remember for the next 10 days or so.”
Once he was in the air, Price immediately began the drive to Louisville. “I actually got there 10 minutes before he landed. When they got him into a room, the first person he saw besides a nurse was the urologist, because of where he had been burned. They wanted to make sure he could still use the bathroom. Then they got him into a room quickly at the Burn Unit. He doesn’t remember much, but I remember three or four nurses coming in and raising his bed. They were amazing. One young man put his phone on and got some music playing and for two hours, he took tweezers, peeling away at the dead skin. That was just crazy. Then they wrapped him up, and he was walking just days later.”
Fitzsimons was in UofL Hospital for 28 days, eventually being discharged on Oct. 5, 2023; coincidentally, the same day as Price’s birthday.
Fitzsimons’ recovery was challenging. He began doing laser therapy at UofL Health around February 2024. “It’s not something you want to go through. The pain is unbelievable. They give you medication beforehand, but it just doesn’t do much. It was 30 minutes the first time, then 45 to an hour after that, and it was once a month for six months. I think one would sooner get a tattoo removed than go through that. I think I finished in October 2024. It got to a point where it was so painful that I couldn’t do it anymore. But Dr. Shapiro helped me as much as he could, he was so good and so funny.”
Price shared, “A burn is one of the worst things to go through, and it was excruciating for him.”
Reflecting on the past year, including the initial burn and subsequent recovery, Fitzsimons said, “I haven’t lit a fire pit since, because Heather won’t let me. Deep down, there was probably some effect on me the first six months. I wouldn’t say depression per say, but mentally I felt going downhill. But I wasn’t really scared to be around flame, it never really clicked with me. Initially, I wanted nothing to do with a grill or a gas stove. When you go to do something like that and realize you don’t want to do something, then yeah, you realize it affects you a bit. I just didn’t want to push anything.” The couple noted that the firewood, fire extinguisher, the gas can, and other materials near the fire pit are, to this day, exactly where they were left after the couple departed for the hospital.”
Fitzsimons said, “I don’t really look back on it unless it comes up in conversation, except to consider how much worse it could have been. Especially if I had my kids that weekend. I’m just thankful it was me by myself. Thankfully, nobody else was hurt.”
Fitzsimons’ son Evan is 13, and his daughter Katie is 15. Price has an 18-year-old son named Keene, a 13-year-old daughter named Hollin, and an 11-year-old son named Cruz.
Price said the couple uses humor as a way to process what had happened. “Last year I got him a little Christmas ornament with two elves around a fire pit, which said, ‘you set my heart on fire’ or something like that.”
She said it was their way to cope with what happened. Fitzsimons said he was glad they found a way to laugh about it. “I think I was starting to experience some anxiety or depression, but in truth, I just put my head down and got back to work. Laughing about it gives us a chance to process things in our own way. It’d be easy otherwise, to drag yourself into a dark hole thinking about it.”
Price is still able to keep a strong perspective on everything. Adding, “A good friend of mine always says if we were to put all of our own problems into a pile with everyone else’s, someone always has it worse. In a lot of ways, we would choose our own problems over someone else’s. No matter how bad we have it, someone has had it worse. If it was going to happen, it worked out the way it was supposed to.”
The couple had nothing but kind words for the team at UofL Health. Price notes, “The people who took care of him were the best. He could not have gotten better care anywhere else. The nurses who initially treated him saw his name on the list for laser surgery, and they waited outside the door until he was done so that they could see him and say hello.”
Fitzsimons encourages others to learn from his experience, saying, “Don’t play with fire. It could have gone so much worse. I’d take all that pain in a heartbeat again if it meant knowing Heather or my kids wouldn’t have to experience what I did.”
He continued, “Without Heather being by my side I wouldn’t have made it through, there’s no doubt about that. She stepped in and organized everything, not just taking care of me and getting family members updated but organizing what needed to be done around the farm. Without her, I wouldn’t have made it through any of it. My mom and my sister also flew over and stayed here for like 3 months to take care of me. It just goes back to friends who looked after the farm, Heather, my mom, sister, and everyone at the hospital who looked after me. There just isn’t a good way to thank everyone for what they did. One person being out of that loop and I wouldn’t have made it.”
