Why I Never Thought Our Child Would Be A Burn Victim

I’ve tried several times to sit down this week and write this post to update our readers.  Last week we were having an Essential Oil class at our house, and it was the witching hour that centers around cooking dinner, homework, and general busyness.  Our older son was obsessing about a homework paper about nouns, verbs, and adjectives, and continued to remind me that he needed help. I conceded and went over to the dinner table to help him while my husband cooked vermicelli and chicken at the stove. Our sixteen-month-old son was playing near his toy box adjacent to the kitchen.

Our son’s job is to feed the dogs and let them out every night before dinner. However, this night in particular he shut the door after he fed them. They were whining to get out and my husband made the decision to walk away from the stove to let them out. Every parent has to make split second judgements, and he will always regret walking away from the stove top. Within seconds he somehow made it over to the stove and the skillet came crashing to the floor. Since my husband’s back was turned to the kitchen as he let the dogs out (and I was on the other side of the island, so I couldn’t see), we may never fully know how he got the skillet down.

My husband turned around to see our son in the silent scream you see right before their agony comes out.  Our son was standing in the vermicelli. My husband is a nurse….a pediatric nurse… so you can imagine his guilt.  He quickly picked him up and called for me. I ran over and removed our son’s socks and his pants. At first we thought it was a minor burn and rushed him to the bathroom to run some cool water over his feet. By the time we got to the bathroom, the skin was starting to peel in layers from both feet.  My husband told me we had to go to the emergency room immediately.

I don’t know if anyone else has ever had those moments where time stands still or everything seems in slow motion, but that’s how I feel about the first few minutes after the initial burn. I even stopped to call the pediatrician to ask if we should come to their office or go to the Emergency Room. They directed us to our local ER, and I called my mom and told her she had to come immediately.  Our older son didn’t want to come along, I think out of fear, so he opted to wait for his grandmother to come in a few minutes.

Not thinking clearly, I realized that no one had checked the stove, so I ran back into the house and realized that the burner was still on. I look back now and realize it would have looked like a three-ring circus to an outsider.  I told our other son to grab a few beach towels and throw it over the mess on the floor until my mom could get there. We are blessed to live within about six blocks of the hospital, so we raced to get there as fast as we could. It felt like every driver in front of us was in slow motion. As I looked at his feet I could see the skin peeling away.

When we arrived at the ER my husband pulled up to the entrance and I raced inside, only to run into a friend from church, who was there with her son who attends one of the schools where I teach.  The nurse saw us come in and opened a door to go back to a room immediately.  The hospital staff tried their best, but seemed somewhat unsure of what to do. They tried to take his temperature and get an O2 saturation level, all the while he’s screaming uncontrollably.

They came in quickly and told us they had to take pictures to send to the burn unit at a hospital two hours away.  I was still in disbelief, and didn’t fully comprehend that they might have to send us to another hospital.  He was red from his chest down to his feet, and at first we thought he was burnt much worse. However, we later found out that it was his body’s reaction to the burn, and the only burns were actually on the tops of both feet.

For sixty to eighty minutes we had to wait for the burn unit and doctors to decide if he should be transported to the hospital with the burn team.  He writhed in pain, screaming and crying as we waited. Nothing calmed him down, which is understandable, and large, pus filled blisters started emerging on his left foot.  As he writhed in pain, his burns scraped over the hospital bed, which looking back, I’m still not sure why he was not given medication for pain sooner.

My husband would hold him with his feet facing out and I just wrapped my arms around both of them trying to calm him down. After what seemed like an eternity, the hospital staff came in and wrapped him in a cool, water saturated blanket, because they still weren’t sure of the extent of the burns to the body.  The debated about swaddling him so I could hold him while they took more vitals, and all four of them sort of stood there and debated about how to swaddle. At this point I wanted so badly to scream, “Move out of the way, you idiots, and let me swaddle him.” I knew this would definitely not be a godly response and tried to bite my tongue as my son continued to scream.

Finally, the word came that they would transfer him to the hospital with the burn unit about two hours away and the ambulance was on its way. They decided on an IV with some Fentinyl, and after ten minutes of trying to insert an IV into a screaming child’s hand, he finally found some relief.  It took about thirty seconds once they pushed the meds for him to calm down.  It sort of felt like how the disciples felt when Jesus calmed the storm.  The waters calmed and the boat stood still so to speak.

During this time we prepped for who would follow the ambulance, and that person would go home and pack. My husband decided to go home and get our things and I would ride in the ambulance.  The drive was over two hours on a bumpy highway, but my son was able to sleep for most of the ride since he was sedated.  The hospital had an emergency room just for children, and the ambulance backed in slowly.  The paramedics pulled out his stretcher and took us inside into a room. They transferred our son to the ER bed, and again we waited for a resident doctor to see him.

In the meantime my husband arrived, which indicated how fast he was driving, since he was supposed to be an hour behind us on the highway.  The doctor came in and evaluated our son and said that he would have to have his blisters popped and the burnt skin de-breeded that night without sedation.  I can’t describe the agony I felt for my son that night. I will never forget those hours for the rest of my life.  Watching them rip open the blisters and scrub at the burn skin while he cried brings me to tears every time I think about it.  Thankfully, the IV meds must have still given him some pain relief, because after the scrubbing was over he calmed down fairly quickly.

We also knew they would de-breed the burn again the next morning, but it would be under sedation. The nurse explained that they would try to place a fake silicone-type skin called Supathel to the wounds at that time.  We didn’t sleep at all that night, and I just held him in my arms, since his sleep was fitful. I was just glad he was able to fall asleep in the first place.

The next morning they took him back to the room and asked us to come back until he was fully sedated. Since our son had an MRI earlier in the year for possible epilepsy, and ear tubes placed, we had been through sedation before. However, as soon as they started working on his feet, they told us we should probably leave, since some children can still move in pain even when sedated. We went back to the room and I just sobbed.  It was the first time I had really cried since the initial burn, more out of shock. When he was first burnt, I was in survival mode, and couldn’t really process all that was happening.

They told us that if the Supathel worked, he could go home in a few days, but if not, he might need a skin graft.  We would know more the next day when they changed his dressing. Something else I learned through this process is that burn victims are much more susceptible to dehydration, so he had fluids through his IV for the first twenty-four hours. Also, his body temperature might have trouble regulating itself.

My mom drove up with our older son that day and spent the night with me at the hospital while hubby stayed at a hotel on the hospital campus called the Hackerman-Patz house.  The hospital wing had a beautiful play room for children, and full-time employees to help made the hospital experience fun for children. We took many rides around the floor in a little wagon he loved. We also played ball, read books, wrote on the Magna Doodle, and did whatever made him happy. Even the first night after he was de-breeded he was walking on both feet. Nothing kept him down. Even with one hand splinted with the IV, he adapted all play with the one hand and the thumb on his splinted hand.

The next morning they came and changed the dressings. We knew God is faithful, and there were so, so many people praying for our little man.  We received the news that we could go home, and that a skin graft was not imminent.  What a praise! We had to come back three days later, so we packed our bags and headed home. The next day he was slightly fussy, but did really well considering what had happened.

By the next night he woke up and vomited throughout the night. We took him to our pediatrician who felt it was a stomach virus. By that night he was running a fever of 103.5. I called the burn doctor on call at 2a.m. and he said to take him to our local ER or drive the two hours to their ER. We opted for our local ER again, and waited three hours to be seen. When he was finally seen, the doctor ruled out infection from the burns and we found out he had the stomach virus plus a touch of bronchitis and we were sent home with an antibiotic.

We had to leave that night to stay at the hotel on the hospital grounds. The Hackerman-Patz house was amazing, and is such a wonderful place. Because our son was a burn victim, we could stay for $35 per night. This was a huge blessing, since we already had the cost of gas.  Also, companies like Chick-Fil-A donate food several times a week to the house, so we didn’t have the expense of food either.

The next morning we met with the burn team and they assessed the burns and said the silicone skin had not taken to either foot, but he was healing nicely.  They also said that we needed to use a special cream that would cost several hundred dollars.  The Lord was faithful once again, and our prescription insurance covered all but $30 in copays. What a praise!

He continued to run a fever the rest of that day and the following day, which brings us to yesterday. It was his first fever-free day, and today he seemed almost back to his old self, despite his bandaged feet. You can imagine that it was tough sticking to our Spending Freeze in the midst of all this chaos, but I will tell you that we did our best.

The lesson we learned through this process is that our two children are very, very different. Our first son was not a climber, and isn’t “into stuff” as much as this little guy. We honestly thought that as a teacher and a nurse that this would never happen to our child. We also agreed that my husband should have said, “I’m walking away from the hot stove, please come over here to watch him.” We both agreed that the “that won’t happen” mentality is too easy, and that we will never let that happen again.  We wanted to share our story to remind parents that we need to be vigilant to protect our children, and that preventing injury always needs to be our number one concern.

We’d also like to give a huge shout out of thanks to our family, friends, co-workers, and others who have blessed us with meals, phone calls, texts, support, and encouragement during this difficult time.

~Love,

Adam & Steph