Day 68 - Why Teachers are Awesome

One of the burn patients H. down the hall discovered that Daniel likes Disney videos. She is a Special Ed teacher and learned or surmised a few more things about him. Her husband works at a Disney store. Today they walked down to our end of the unit with a gift bag for Daniel. So now Mickey is hangin' in bed with Daniel watching him heal. He also got a drinking tumbler and a nice bag where he can store his accoutrement.

 

We were caught off-guard when she and her family came by as we had been getting him in his gunslinger to stretch his right shoulder. I was speechless and completely floored by their generosity. Once we had a moment we walked down to her room and thanked her, met the family and talked about fire and other groovy stuff. Here's a patient who is all burned and going through the ordeal like Daniel, but she's thinking of him and his needs - touching!

We know how awesome and kind teachers are - my teachers at Euclid organized the meal train that brought us great quantities of food. Dawn's business school colleagues organized and alternated weeks with Euclid bringing more yummy food that we've been enjoying since this all began. Teachers everywhere are the best!

Daniel had a bit of a rough night for awhile - we see that his skin is drying out and very itchy. That was making it hard for him to sleep for part of the night even though I had lotioned him all over (where I could) before leaving last night. This morning his neck and arms were so dry. I'm surprised how quickly he dries out. We think that it's partly because of the cleaning agent they use during wound care. We brought this up last time, but the wound orders didn't get updated to try using an alternative soap so he's really dry again. When he's dry he scratches his delicate skin and it breaks open - especially the donor skin on his legs. Note to self: Make sure those wound care orders are updated. Also he is now getting scheduled doses of his anti-itch medicine instead of it being when requested. That will help keep his itching under control for a few days.

At noon we're doing a short wound care session in his bed to take down his dressings and make a slight repair to the surgical dressings on his back - needs more staples that have pulled out. He's been wiggling and scratching them so they need a bit of attention to get them to stay in place. During this session the burn techs will also do a heavy lotion bath to help with the dry skin on his legs, arms, neck and tummy.

The tubeflex on his legs fit tightly - they slide up from his ankles to his thighs and at the top where they end they were cutting into his leg - there's that delicate skin again. His wound tech K. (she's awesome) thinks that the wrong size was used last time (sized for arms instead of the leg size) and that was the problem. Since he's gotten so skinny his legs are almost as thin as his arms. Now we have the correct size on and that will help his leg to heal better.

Jamie visited today and noticed after breakfast that Daniel had developed a blister on his thumb. It appeared to look like a burn! How did that happen? At first we thought that it happened during his breakfast and that his silverware had gotten really hot sitting on his hot plate they deliver his food on, but we think after talking with nurses and then testing the heat on his lunch plate that it was more likely a "wear" blister from his manipulating his fork like he does when he's trying to get food to his mouth. Again - there's an example of really delicate new skin and how fragile it is. His nurse cleaned up his thumb and wrapped it and we are watching it closely.

With the wound care and the stapling going on we got Daniel medicated pretty well so he slept for two hours with his face plate on. Wearing the face plate for that long was really good for his facial graft and his chin is starting to look pretty good now. It's cool to watch his graft skin soothing out from the wearing of the face plate.

Now we are up in a chair and eating a big meal during the afternoon and will maybe eat a snack for dinner to top off his calorie/protein needs.