Noah Burns his Hand

CAUTION: You may not want to see the pictures included on this post. There is no blood or gaping open wounds. In fact most of us have had a blister in our lives and know what it looks like once the blister breaks. That's all this is - except that the blister is pretty much the whole hand, on an innocent little boy, and it may make your stomach ache a little bit, you might wince, and you will definitely want the empathy pains to go away quickly. Second Caution: This post actually has a lot more words than pictures. I know you are not used to that from me, so you may need to pace yourself. OK, I think you have been sufficiently warned. You may proceed now, carefully! After the aforementioned hike, the family met at Mom and Dad's place for hot dogs and tin foil dinners cooked in the backyard fire pit. This was all as a replacement activity since we were unable to go camping as a whole group. Dinner was great and as most of us were nearing the end of our feast, Noah tripped and his hand landed in cooling bed of hot coals in the fire pit. Grandma was instantly up and retrieved Noah before most of us knew what happened. We had a large bowl with melting ice cubes (for our drinks) that was quickly recommissioned into a burn treatment vessel. Matt also suggested applying vanilla so we did that too. I held him trying to console him, keep his hand cool in the water/ice cubes and try to evaluate the extent of the damage. After about 10 minutes or so, we loaded him up and went to the InstaCare a couple of blocks away. They rushed us right to one of the rooms and began to check him out.  Unfortunately there really is not much you can do. It is just pain management, keep it clean and wait and see how much damage has been done. The doctor and nurses wrapped his hand (coated with burn cream) in gauze. Noah quickly ripped it right off.  They tried again and he quickly ripped that one off too. Then we wrapped both hands so that his left hand would not be able to remove the bandages from the right hand. That came off too but it took him a bit longer. So one more time - both hands wrapped up, then ace bandages wrapped around both hands. During this whole time of me trying to console Noah who is screaming in pain and really annoyed that the nurses kept wanting his hands completely wrapped up, Jill went to drop off a prescription for pain meds (lortab) so that it could be filled as quickly as possible. Now that he had two clubs for hands, Jill and I swapped. I went across the street to pick up the drugs while she stayed with Noah. Jill said that it was one of the most heart breaking moments she has ever had. Noah was rolling around on the floor trying to get away from the pain. He also was unable to hold onto his bottle which frustrated him even more. Gratefully the pain medication kicked in pretty quickly. He was quite entertaining as he was clearly not feeling any pain once we got back to the house. We continued to struggle with the bandages. Each we had to reapply the salve and rewrap. We went back to the InstaCare a couple of days later. They trimmed a bunch of the dead skin off and said that it was looking quite good. Since we were only a few days away from our big trip to Philly to visit Grandma and Grandpa Kneeland, Jill made an appointment with the UofU Burn Clinic so that we could get a second opinion and make sure we were doing everything we needed to do while we were away. The burn clinic confirmed that it was looking pretty good. All the skin was pink (meaning second degree burn) not black and charred (third degree). They cut off a lot more dead skin then wrapped him up in a new silver foam treatment instead of the cream. This was much better to administer and let the skin breath more. They gave us all of the supplies that we needed and we were set for our vacation. By this time, we were no longer wrapping up both hands. He knew that he was supposed to leave the bandages on his hand. But boy, they are sure tempting! Every day (sometimes multiple times) I had to repair his bandages. He is just too active for them not to fall apart at some point. The trip to Philly was fabulous. Jill will be writing about those adventures, right Jill? Each day the wounds looked better and better. Each day the bandages decreased in size. The silver foam allowed us to wrap each finger individually so that he had limited use of his hand. That made him much happier boy than he was with the club hand. By the end of the trip, he was able to play in the water with Grandma's water toys which made Grandma very happy! We returned to the burn clinic after our trip and they said that everything looked great. We just need to keep applying lotion and massaging the area to make sure that the skin stays soft and pliable. It is truly a blessing that the burns were not any worse and it is amazing how fast young kids can heal. You really have to look to see any of the original wounds. There are couple of spots on the back of hand that really the only scarring left. Amazing. You can find more pictures of his hand here.