Girl Catches Fire at Hospital: Cancer Survivor feels Hand Sanitizer may be to Blame

When you go to the hospital, you can expect one of two things: Hopefully to get better or unfortunately to die. However, for an 11-year-old cancer survivor, she evidently just caught on fire.

According to reports from Children's Hospital in Portland, Ore., Ireland Lane hit her head and passed out. She was receiving care at the hospital when the front of her t-shirt burst into flames. As a result of her third-degree burns across her chest, arms and ear lobes, she will need multiple skin grafts and burn treatments, and is scheduled to receive her second skin graft on her 12th birthday on Thursday.

"She still has bad dreams, but she doesn't recall the actual incident, which from my perspective is very good," her father Steven Lane told The Oregonian.

Investigators believe a mix of flammable hand sanitizer and static electricity may have been the cause.

Lane, who was diagnosed with a rare form of kidney cancer in 2007, has been battled the cancer and beat it twice in five years. She recently moved from Tennessee -- where she was receiving treatment -- to Oregon, where she originally resided.

Her father told The Oregonian that he was sleeping in her hospital room when he woke up to see her running while on fire. As he put out the flames with his own body, Lane was then transported to Legacy Oregon Burn Center, where they discovered burns from her belly button to her chin, on parts of her arms and the bottom of her ear lobes. She also singed her hair.

Steven claims that investigators told him that the only possible cause could be an alcohol-based hand sanitizer from a hospital dispenser. No one besides Lane had seen the fire start, and investigators' first examinations showed no clear cause.

"As readily available as hand sanitizer is nowadays, and how everybody sends it to school with their kids, it makes me much more worried," Steven said.

Rich Hoover, a spokesman for the Oregon State Fire Marshal's office, told NBC News that flammable sanitizer and a spark of static electricity "are definitely part of the investigation."