Day 24 - More walking and bare arms

Today during morning rounds the team upped his nutrition intake. He seems to be burning through all the food they are giving him via feeding tube. His weight had dropped back to his original weight so we were ready to ask about this, but the team had already decided to up his intake so that's great.

Daniel took another stroll today this time to the beloved Tub Room. But when he came out he had his arms bare for the first time. We observed that his left elbow and bits of his whole arm are unburned and the rest of his arm has a 2:1 autograft from his legs. The 2:1 ratio means the surgeons mesh the source skin and stretch it to twice its original size then graft that to the burn area on his arms. His left thumb has grafting, but it's 1:1.

Here's a short video of Daniel walking from his room down the halls to the tub room this morning. I missed his strut yesterday, but I'm told that onlookers (visitors, nurses, doctors) were crying while taking snaps of his first walk. He has this endearing quality that wins the hearts of random people. (This is a video that may not play on an iPhone - 😕.)

After a short rest in his room Daniel's OT talked to us to have him sit again in a chair and do some activities to get his arms working. This time she asked that we try to keep him doing activities for 1-2 hours! That seemed like a pretty high bar to aim for at this point in Daniel's recovery.

We all helped to get Daniel and his extraneous tubes and wires all set and he stood, pivoted and sat down in a chair. Then we moved the cart over and gave him jigsaw puzzles to work on. This is the first time he has used his arms and fingers for any activity. At first he was shaky and had difficulty getting his fingers to grasp the puzzle pieces. Slowly he refined his gross and fine motor skills, achieving accuracy and evened out his targeting and placement. One could see how hard he was trying to get his hand-eye coordination and all of his body to work again.

After about an hour Daniel started to nod off. We got him back in bed for a rest and let him recover for tomorrow when we'll be trying to get him up in a chair using his arms again.

Over the weekend his sister Amanda will be visiting so that will be really awesome.