Day Two - Settling in

Each day Daniel will get his dressings changed on his body. Twice per day on his face because the face heals that much quicker. Fun fact - they are using hospital-grade honey on some of his skin for its healing properties. They call it medi-honey.

Dan was having issues with not producing urine on the first day. That cleared up later on the first day and that's good. Not sure if his catheter was in "correctly", but they put another one in, checked it by ultrasound and all seems good now.

His kidneys are injured and that's an important thing to help with the healing. This means he may need a form of dialysis - slow dialysis that will allow his kidneys to heal properly.
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The one thing that strikes me is how supportive the staff have been. How quickly they respond (even people from other centers like urulogy) when Daniel needs something. It's still hitting me that he's in INTENSIVE CARE and what that means - the severity of his condition. When we have a question it is answered immediately or they bring the appropriate person to answer the question. I don't feel like they've ever tried to be delicate in answering us - they tell us what's happening - some of it hurts and is scary, but I'd rather that.

Another issue that's been dogging Dan is a drop in blood pressure. Could be various reasons, but we think the reason was that a switch was made from Versed (a sedative) to something called Precedex. They've tried tweaking, but on Friday morning we'll find out if they stick with Precedex.

The doctors keep saying that because Daniel is young and healthy he has that going for him. We've heard from several of the lead doctors that he will live, that it will be a long road - a roller coaster with ups and down and surprises.

The big surprise (they told us on Day One this would happen) is that his head would swell for a few days and that it would be REALLY BIG. This was normal result. Again in the morning before we saw him, they warned us that his head would be big. Well they were right. It's enormous - they weren't lying!!
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Getting fluids and nutrition in him is important - remember the "he's running a marathon every day" thing? Well I mentioned he was about 113 lbs when he came in to the ICU. Today they weighed him and his weight was 149 lbs - I suspect most of that is actually in his head - it's that BIG! (They weighed him twice). It matches the fact that his intake was 19 liters and that his outtake (pee) was not much.

Now that's he's peeing really nicely his head will begin to slowly come down to size. It will take a few days.

Friday (day three) is planned for his first surgery - to remove dead burned skin and maybe do skin grafts. That's all I got right now.