Woman Who Suffered Severe Burns as a Baby is Reunited With her Nurse Through Facebook

(WTXF) - A woman who suffered severe burns as a baby will meet the nurse who cared for her almost 38 years ago thanks to Facebook.

Amanda Scarpinati, 38, suffered horrific burns to her head and fingers from a vaporizer when she was just three-years-old.

She had been lying on a couch with a steam vaporizer on the floor beside her when she rolled off onto the boiling machine. It scaled her with steam and mentholated ointment and the burns required many years of reconstructive surgery.

After surgery she was photographed being comforted by nurse, Susan Berger.

Updated: see in the comments for the strongest lead.... These are pictures of me as a baby while I was being treated at...

Berger was just 21-years-old at the time, and was just out of college when she was working in the paediatric recovery room at Albany Medical Center.

"Growing up as a child disfigured by the burns, I was bullied and picked on, tormented…I'd look at those pictures and talk to her, even though I didn't know who she was. I took comfort looking at this woman who seemed so sincere caring for me," says Scarpinati.

Scarpinati reports that she has always treasured the black-and-white pictures of herself as an infant being comforted by a young nurse, which were published in an annual report by Albany Medical Center in 1977.

However, Nurse Berger's name wasn't published along with the pictures.

Scarpinati has spent years since then trying to discover her caretaker's identity.

A month ago Scarpinati posted the pictures to Facebook in hopes of finding help with putting a name to the nurse's face--she was not sure that it would work.

But within 12 hours, the picture had gone viral.

Angela Leary, a former nurse at Albany Medical Center, sent Scarpinati a message revealing that the nurse in the photo was Susan Berger.

Berger had reportedly moved to the Syracuse area years ago and now oversees the health center at Cazenovia College in New York's Finger Lakes region.

A local television reporter was able to track her down.

Scarpinati and Berger have now talked on the phone, and plan to meet in person today for the first time since the picture was taken.

"It was amazing. She just has such a gentle caring voice, just like I imagined she'd have," says Scarpinati of her phone call with Berger.

"I don't know how many nurses would be lucky enough to have something like this happen, to have someone remember you all that time," Berger says. "I feel privileged to be the one to represent all the nurses who cared for her over the years.