Long story short: Julia has dream about making rock candy. Julia thinks it would be fun activity for her and kids on Saturday. Jack burns hand on stove. Rock candy obviously abandoned and
will forever be tainted in my mind.
So Jack's hand is burned, he's screaming, and I'm running his hand under water in the bathroom. I'm waving my hand out the window trying to catch TJ's attention (who is mowing the grass). I have him come in to continue rinsing Jack's hand, while I look online to see what to do. When I see that any burns on the hand, especially ones starting to blister (which his palm was), should be seen immediately at a doctor. I immediately hauled Jack to the ER. He's screaming, flapping his hand in the backseat. I'm beside myself.
We walk into the ER and they immediately took us into a back supply room (where nurses were coming in and out preparing injections) and told us to continue to run his hand under water for 10 minutes. We're both completely wet, as he's still shaking his hand and screaming. An ER staff member came over to me, with a paper towel and a pen, and took our name and address (that was the extent of us doing paperwork! Can you imagine that in the US?). Then a nurse wrapped Jack's hand and told me that they wanted us to go to the military hospital, as they had a burn unit. As I'm trying to get the directions, Jack rips off his bandage. The nurses take him from me to go rewrap it, and another nurse wrote down the address of the hospital (thank goodness for GPS, otherwise I'd still be trying to find it).
I talked to TJ, and he was going to take Amelia to Tammy's house, and he would meet us at the military hospital. The nurse told me that the other hospital knew we were on our way and were waiting for us.
So off we go to the military hospital (completely empty, WW II-looking building) and find the burn unit. Indeed, they were waiting for us and took us back immediately. TJ showed up just a few minutes later. They diagnosed the big burn (covering the vast majority of the palm of his hand) as a second-degree superficial burn.
****Possibly Yukky Details Below. Those with weak stomachs, proceed to after the next set of asterisks************
So with Jack in my lap, they take off the bandage. His whole palm is a big blister. They open the blister and slather it with flammazine, and then bandage it back up.
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As soon as the bandage was on, Jack stopped crying and was ready to play. And he hasn't complained of pain since! They told us to return on Sunday and they'd take another look at it.
Jack has been kindly reminding me since the incident: "I burned my hand. Is your fault." And then when I was trying to sing him songs Sat. night and burst in tears, we had this conversation:
Jack: Mama, why sad?
Me: I'm sad because your hand is hurt.
Jack (holding up his unhurt hand): Happy, mama. This hand hurt -- no. See, mama, is not hot. (and he presses his little hand against my cheek)
Which, of course, made me cry even harder.
And then he told Amelia the next day, laughing and pointing at me, "mama cry yike baby. is funny." I'm glad he sees the humor in it all. It's at least reassuring that he will never remember this incident, except in the retelling. But it will haunt me forever.
And on Sunday, Amelia hand-fed Jack his chocolate chip pancakes. He's done really well with his hand and not using it.
We came back on Sunday, and they unwrapped the bandage. They cleaned it up a little and put on an Aquacel patch, wrapped it up and sent us on our way, with a followup appointment for Wednesday morning. I've been beside myself -- literally nauseous -- ever since it happened. Not only for Jack's health and wellness (obviously the priority), but also because we're scheduled to leave on vacation in a few days! So I wasn't sure if we'd even be able to leave...
So fast forward through 2 days of worrying, until Tuesday afternoon. I notice that he has 3 blisters on his thumb, forefinger and middle finger. I panic that these are 3rd degree burns that the burn unit missed, and I'm envisioning skin grafts and all sorts of things. I call the burn unit and ask about it. They say just to put lotion on it, and they'd look at it in the morning. (Lotion???? Are you kidding???? But I did it anyway.)
So off we go on Wednesday. They take us right in. They unwrap his hand but leave the Aquacel patch alone (they don't even look to see how the healing is, since the patch adheres to the wound). They replace the gauze on top of the patch and rewrap his hand, and that's it. I had them look at his fingers and they did say they look perfectly fine (not even second-degree burns, they say) and to continue to use lotion on them.
We got the all clear to go on vacation (hooray!) and will go back to the burn unit after we return. The burn should actually heal while we're away (these burns should have a complete -- though thin -- layer of new skin within 10-14 days of the initial burn).
Lessons Learned
So, besides the obvious precautions, here's a few things I learned about burns:
-- They usually look worse than they are
--Get them under cool -- not cold -- water immediately (within 90 seconds if possible) and keep under running water for at least 10 minutes to stop the burning process
-- Have some flamazine (or the US equivalent) on hand -- http://wound.smith-nephew.com/UK/Standard.asp?NodeId=2744 --
-- Aquacel sounds like a pretty cool treatment for burns, though I'll wait to give my final verdict until after the bandages come off.
I probably will have some updates to Jack's story, but that's the gist of it. Poor guy is most upset that this has ruined his chances at driving the bumper cars at the carnival. But on the plus side, he's gaining a lot of sympathy with the guy who doles out the free ride passes. Jack's been getting a lot of them....
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