It is just two months since Kilee Brookbank was engulfed in a fireball that razed off 25 per cent of her skin.

But the 16-year-old has made an incredible recovery.

On November 10, while home alone in Georgetown, Ohio, a freak explosion burned off her finger tips, hair, eyebrows and eyelashes, and obliterated the skin from her arms, back, legs, face, and stomach with third-degree burns.

Incredibly, she has survived - and this week she took the ultimate step: going back to school.

Transformation: Kilee Brookbank, 16, pictured left in September 2014 before the fire; center in November 2014 in Shriner's Children's Hospital; and right in January 2015 as she prepares to go back to school

Before and after: The freak explosion in her house left Kilee (pictured left and right) with life-changing burns

'I guess I'm just lucky,' Brookbank said to WCPO in a stunning tone of bravery that even shocked her doctors.

'It makes you stronger. You don't take anything for granted. It's life changing. I know there's worse things that can happen.'

Few could imagine anything much worse than lighting a candle to get rid of a foul smell, then almost burning to death.

The fire was so aggressive it went right to the fat beneath her skin, leaving her hands milk-bottle white.

'It felt normal,' she said. 'My body felt the same, kind of numb. My hands felt different. I remember it was really hot, but it didn't hurt.'

Her mother and stepfather were at work when the house exploded and Kilee ran out the half-destroyed walls into the street on fire.

Trauma: The 16-year-old was home alone in Georgetown, Ohio, when she lit a candle and the house exploded

Horror: The fire was so aggressive it went right to the fat beneath her skin, leaving her hands milk-bottle white

'I'm just so lucky': The high school junior said she is just grateful she survived the fireball that engulfed her

Painstaking: Getting ready for school used to take two minutes and now takes a minimum of ten

Neighbors rushed to throw buckets of water over the high school junior, call 911, and call her parents.

She was rushed to a helipad with her mother then flown to Cincinnati Children's Hospital 20 minutes away, then transferred to the specialist unit at Shriner's down the road where her father met them.

In the emergency room doctors cut open her arms in a desperate bid to reduce the swelling, while she was given oxygen, an IV, and doused in antibiotic solution.

After four operations, skin grafts on her hands, and two months of physiotherapy, Kilee has returned to RULH High School, where she is honor student and plays soccer.

'It feels good,' she told WCPO as she sat beaming in her bandages at the school's opening assembly.

Battling through: She has had to endure hours of physiotherapy a day such as picking up toothpicks

Effort: Every little task is difficult after the fire on November 10, 2014, razed all the skin from her fingertips

Happy to be back: Kilee said 'it feels good' to return to RULH High School, where she is an honor student

Moving on: She has pushed herself to go out in public despite the scarring experience and marked injuries

Investigators are still working to understand the cause of the fire, which is likely to have been a propane gas leak.

'She had told us she arrived home and went into the house and smelled a strange odor, and lit a candle to combat the odor, and the house exploded,' Georgetown fire chief Joe Rockey said.

'There was propane provided to the home from a tank around back. Not sure if that was it or not, we'll have to do some investigating to figure out if that was the cause.'

He added: 'Propane is heavier than your oxygen level, your normal oxygen, so it's going to build up in the floor, under the floor, anywhere it can until it meets an ignition source.

'And that may very well have been the candle. Not saying that's what it was, but it could have been.