Turia Pitt found photos of herself two days after her accident

Turia Pitt has revealed the heartbreaking find she made while attempting to sift through her medical records as she wanted surgery for her nose.

Turia Pitt has revealed the heartbreaking find she made while attempting to sift through her medical records.

Turia, 35, suffered burns to 65 per cent of her body after she was caught in a grass fire while competing in a 100km marathon in 2011.

She told the listeners of her podcast Turia Pitt is Hard Work that she had been attempting to get her nose fixed so she could breathe properly.

Turia explained she recently saw a surgeon who said it couldn’t be done, so she asked her doctors to send her medical records from the last decade.

When boxes turned up at her house she began to sift through them in a bid to find any information pertaining to her nose.

Turia Pitt found photos of herself in the hospital. Picture: Instagram/Turia Pitt

Among the files, she found a USB – but had no idea what she would find on it.

After plugging it into her computer she came across a folder called ‘Photos’.

“So I click on that and there’s a folder with dates on the photos, and the date of my accident was on the September 2, 2011, and there are photos in that folder which are dated September 4, 2011,” she told her listeners.

“I knew it would obviously be very confronting for me. Now, do you think I stepped back, took a couple of deep breaths and thought about it a little more, or do you think I just f***ing double-clicked?”

She said the folder had images of her in hospital, looking swollen, with parts of her skin that had now been grafted looking as it had been before the fire.

There was also images of her bloody hands, which has been partially amputated.

Turia said she looked half of what she used to look like, and partly what she looks like now.

It was 10pm, her family was asleep and she was beside herself. She slammed her laptop shut, picked up her son, who was 10 months old at the time and crying — and grounded herself.

She made her bed on a couch and just watched television until 5am when she then decided to go to the gym.

Turia Pitt reveals her heartbreaking USB discovery. Picture: Instagram/Turia Pitt

When she finished training, she cried in her car as she drove home.

Turia said she kept going through the motions until everything came to a head — and after two weeks she decided to call a psychologist.

“She’s amazing, she came over, we sat down and we looked at the photos together, which she said was important because I may have built it up in my head to be worse than it was,” she said.

“Turns out they were really bad but it was good she was with me and supporting me. We spoke about each of the photos.”

She said the reason it had upset her so much was because, for her, she was injured and had woken up in hospital a month later with a new body.

“I had gotten used to this new body, and this is who I am now, but it was upsetting because I saw old Turia and new Turia at the same time,” she said.

She said it was confronting as it mentally put her back in the hospital.

“It made me think about all I had lost … but it made me think about everything I’ve done since,” she said.