Day Three - First Surgery

Dan moves around a lot - more than you'd think for someone as sedated as he is. It's good to see him moving some. I don't want to share pics of him right now. It doesn't look like him at all anyway - GIANT HEAD and all bandaged up. Poor guy.

The Precedex seems to be giving him some trouble. So they will switch him back to Versed (Midazolam) and see how things smooth out. His high blood has dropped to a very good level.

Still concerned with his kidneys and they measure the creatinine (4 times per day) along with other things to keep him safe and healthy.

So we learned from Dr. Wi (name shortened to maintain some anonymity) who will do his surgery today that this is the first of MANY surgeries - 10 or more are possible for Daniel. Today they will debride his dead skin (basically skinning him of his burned skin) - sound fun? Dan will be under a general anesthesia for this procedure thankfully. The surgery and each subsequent one can take up to 4 hours. Any longer than that and it just gets too hard for the patient.

Other news we learned today:
Daniel will likely have 10 or more surgeries for skin grafts. Some of the grafts may not take so then they'd have to do that area again.

It's not a question of if, but when he will encounter infections. The fact that he has a healthy body and is 24 years old goes a long way in his being able to recover smoothly from any infections.

It's also not a question of if, but when he will get pneumonia. Due to the long periods of inactivity and laying down and of course the extreme assault on his entire body from the burns - he will encounter pneumonia during this journey.

This entire process has been likened to a roller coaster with surprises and twists and turns all the way through. The team here is equipped to handle each and every one of these surprises as they come along.

Living with his autism for his whole life has given us some perspective to dealing with something of this magnitude. I know it will help us get through this trial, but none of this is easy. Anytime your child is ill (or extremely damaged) as in this case your heart pours out and there's a lot of feelings (the icky ones) that one has to process.

As I write this we are sitting and waiting while Daniel is doing his first surgery. My in-laws are with us today. A friendly face is always welcome. Tonight Larry and Rimas (two teachers from where I work) are bringing us dinner and some smiles here at the hospital. All of this helps at great deal. I remain positive we will get through this.
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He's out of his first surgery. It went a full 4 hours or so then lots of clean up and getting him situated back in his room. No skin grafting today. All they worked on was cleaning up his chest up to his chin and that took the entire time. There was a lot of bleeding and they needed to use two units of blood. That's about average from what we were told.

To give his kidneys some help they started him on slow extended dialysis. More tubes and machines next to him. When a patient is on this machine he has a dedicated nurse who watches his condition continuously. The machine can be somewhat persnickety and if it goes off-line the nurse has to spring to action to keep it running.
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And now his head has really come down in size and his face looks a bit more human and not basketball shaped.

We tucked him in, stroked his legs and went home.