Daniel's Burn: Day 48

Today is Daniel's last planned surgery. The purpose is to graft his back. In the past 47 days Daniel's back has healed some and other parts were never burned for some reason. When he caught fire it was the back of his shirt tail that was started from the gas stove in our kitchen. The fire spread across the three shirts he was wearing (a normal cold day in Denver) and were mostly burned off by the time Dawn doused the fire with water.

To recap, the first four surgeries removed the damaged burned skin and covered the areas with Allograft. Each of those surgeries lasted anywhere from 3-6 hours. They were necessary before grafting could occur. Once he had some time to recover and overcome the internal horribleness that a burn imposes on your systems the surgeons began to graft skin harvested from his legs. His first graft covered his burned arms from his shoulders down to parts of the back of his hands. The second surgery was about three weeks later. It was a sheet graft with donor skin from his scalp to replace skin on his lower face, throat and neck down to his collarbone. The third grafted his entire chest. And now the fourth will cover his back and do any touch-up around the edges if needed. Some surgeries had two surgeons working on him, today's is with Dr. Wa. working alone.

As I type this we are on hour 3 1/2 and hoping Daniel will be finished up in under an hour. Since the remainder of today will be time spent recovering from his surgery I'll stop here.
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UPDATE: Dan is out of surgery and back in his room recovering. Everything went well and he's all patched. If all goes to plan we could be out of ICU Burn unit in a few weeks. Not sure what comes next, but something like the following:

acute in-patient rehab either here on the burn floor stepped to a non-ICU status OR
possibly at Children's hospital burn unit,
then home with frequent visits as out-patient fading to,
a full recovery in about a year maybe.

Below are some pictures from yesterday when we wheeled Daniel out of the burn unit as we went on a grand tour of the hospital. Dawn had to stay gowned up and only operate the wheel chair, while I was the official pusher of buttons and doorman. Sunday was a slower day at the hospital so it was pretty nice to wheel him around where there's usually a lot of foot traffic. Daniel seemed to be tired (he already had walked with Jamie and sat in his chair for an hour before lunch), and now we wheeled him around for another hour until it was his turn for wound care in the tub room.

When he took him outside he seemed to be noticeably unhappy so we snapped a quick picture and continued on inside. Daniel does not like to stop anywhere so continuous movement worked best. Perhaps he thought we were taking him home when we ventured outside and he believes rightly that he's not healed up enough for that! This was the first time he has seen sunlight since the burn. (Wearing a hat and it was overcast, but we'll need lots of sunscreen and be protective of his tender skin moving forward).

In these pictures he's not smiling, but he mustered to at least look back (you could call it an extreme GLARE and you wouldn't be wrong) at me with his beautiful blue-green eyes. Enough with the lame excuses...

Cafeteria