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So, I need to blog about the wonderful weekend I had, but I just haven't had the time. However, my friend Sarah did blog about it, so I'm going to redirect you to her blog to read a brief telling of our wild and crazy time.

Click Here!!!!

Getting back to "normal"

Ha ha, isn't that a funny title of mine? I guess it's true when you realize that "normal" is a relative term. The reason I used that word is because Adam is now allowed to resume "normal" activity. We are happy about that, though not as happy as he is, I'm sure.

In Denver yesterday we stuck to our normal routine. The nurse took all of the dressings off, then brought the doctor in to look at things. Adam has another yeast infection, so we will stop the lotion massage and start a prescription of Diflucan again. The donor site on his left leg was still very red and looked "yeasty", as the nurse put it. The graft site on his right leg is looking very good, and the thick dressings are a thing of the past.

Here are some pictures from yesterday:

You can see the graft site pretty well in this one. Those dark edges throughout are the edges of the donor skin.

The Child life Specialist (a person who comes in with toys, and their job is to distract kids from what the doctors and nurses are doing) brought a game with her yesterday, and Adam thought it was pretty darn cool.

His legs now have pretty simple dressings on: just a large nonstick pad smeared with nystatin (an anti-fungal ointment), and a thin tube of fabric pulled up over his thighs like nylons. He has a bandage on his side to protect it because it's still not healed.

We don't have to go back for two weeks, at which time they will have the compression garment and they will make sure that it fits correctly. Hopefully it will, because we are moving less than a week later.

Jenna and Will

With all of the Adam hoopla going on, Jen and Will have been a little left out of the blog updates. Okay, a lot left out. Fortunately, they haven't been left out of everyday life! Today they decided they wanted to play "ocean", so they put their swimming suits on and did who knows what upstairs. After awhile they decided they needed some Popsicles. I tried to get a couple of pictures, and these were the best I could manage. :)

Jenna and Will have been troopers over the last month. They have been kind and gentle with Adam (mostly). They are both doing well in school and generally having a good time.

About two weeks ago Jenna got to go to Ft. Collins with her grade at school to watch the Disney movie "Oceans", and they got to go to a restaurant. She was very excited about that part! Jenna also did a project with the help of her Dad. She had to pick an ocean animal that they saw in the movie and do a report on it. Jenna picked sharks. Joel narrowed that down to hammerhead sharks, and they spent a lot of time doing research and writing about the shark. I think they both had a good time doing it, and the report turned out great!

Will has also been doing well in school, although it's harder to get much out of him about what he does at school. His favorite specials are P.E. and music, so Wednesdays are a good day for him! (Both those specials are on Wednesday) The other day I took Will to the store with me to do some grocery shopping and he embarrassed me more than once. :) In the produce section he said, very loudly, "Why does that lady have really big eyes?" I didn't know who he was talking about, and I didn't look around to find out! Then at the check out line he said, "That old lady has a LOT of stuff!" He happened to be talking about the woman in front of us in line. Yes she was old, yes she had a lot of stuff, and yes I was mortified.

They have both been their normal, fun, crazy, interesting, exasperating selves. We love them to death!

And so the story continues...

Of course, it was back to Denver today. We finally got to take off Adam's dressings; he still had on the same dressings from surgery. They held up very well, especially considering they were on for eight days. I'm sure it helped that we didn't let him do much of anything this week.

It actually took them quite awhile to get us back into an exam room, so Adam made due in the waiting room by scooting around.

Below is the only picture we have of the actual dressing. I'm not sure how we didn't get any good ones, so this is it. As you can see (kind of) his right leg is totally wrapped up, and his left thigh is covered.


The nurse pulled off the DuoDerm on his side and was checking out the progress...


Next it was time to cut off the dressing on the right leg. As soon as the scissors came out Adam got upset. The boy is going to be permanently traumatized by the sight of scissors.

This leg was wrapped in layer...

after layer...

after layer... (and we didn't get pictures of them all).

There is a mesh layer covering the graft area.

Next it was time to unwrap the right leg. There was a large band-aid type covering over the entire area, and it was very painful to take off; that was probably the worst part.

Waiting to be wrapped up again...

After all of the dressings were off Dr. Moulton came to check things out. He was very pleased by the progress, especially of the donor sites. They are healed (by their definition, which varies greatly from my definition). The graft sites also look good, and our goal is to continue to let them heal undisturbed. They left the mesh covering on and just wrapped over it with the new dressing. In the pictures you might be able to see some of the black skin on the edges: that is donor skin that is overlapping good skin. It will just die and fall off.

They measured him for a compression garment today. It should come in in a couple of weeks, and if it fits properly we will order another one. He will wear the burn garment all of the time, they said 23 out of 24 hours in a day. They suggested that he wear it for about a year. He will continue to be fit with new burn garments as he grows. The compression mostly helps with scarring. By keeping things tight the scars will be flatter to the skin and less noticeable.

They didn't dress his left leg (the donor site), and we will do lotion massages on it four times a day to help with healing and scarring. They did a more normal dressing on his right leg -not so many layers- that goes to his knees. We asked the doctor if we should still limit his activity, and he said yes. He seemed quite surprised that Adam was able to walk with the splint on his leg; I don't think he understands this boy's determination. There is no splint now, but Adam has been fairly compliant with our not letting him walk around. Hopefully he'll be able to last out the next week without getting too cranky.

At our appointment next week they will see how things are doing and hopefully remove the dressings for good. We would then continue with lotion massage over the entire burn. Then we'll need to go back to get the burn garment, and hopefully that will fit well. They know that we are moving at the end of this month, and they've been really great with doing things in a way that will work out for us.

Speaking of moving, have a mentioned how stressful it is? We haven't even gotten into the thick of it, and it's already making my head explode. It could be because we're dealing with moving and all of this drama with Adam at the same time. Maybe one day I'll look back on this time and laugh about how crazy things were, but it is not this day. :)