Another Anniversary

It was one year ago today that Adam was burned with hot oil. It's hard to believe that it's been a full year; time goes by so quickly. Here are some pictures of Adam's scars that we took this morning. If you click to enlarge them you can see the detail much better. He scratched them in his sleep last night, which is why some areas are more red. Itching is really the only issue we are dealing with right now. He doesn't have any problems with mobility, though some of the scars are quite thick. On the third picture you can see where the skin graft donor sites were; they are very faded, and when he gets older and gets hair on his legs you probably won't even be able to tell where they were. What you can't see in the pictures are the white scars on his torso where the less serious burns were. I think those will also fade with time.

There was a time, about two weeks after Adam was burned, that I had a hard time with the fact that he was going to be scarred for the rest of his life. A few weeks previous he had perfect skin, and I couldn't believe that my baby would never, ever go back to that. I knew that eventually I would reconcile the scars with the boy, but at the time I just couldn't imagine it. Now, however, the scars are simply a part of who he is.

He still has a few lasting effects, besides the scars. Just the other evening we were outside in our backyard. We had turned on the sprinklers, and Jenna and Will each ran through a few times just for fun. For some reason Adam thought the sprinklers were spraying hot water, and he wouldn't go anywhere near them. Even seeing Jenna and Will go through didn't make him willing. We tried to get him to touch the water, but he screamed that he didn't want to touch it because it was hot, and he didn't want to get burned. We did make him put his hand in the water, and once he felt that it wasn't hot he kept touching it himself, and he ran through a few times. He had a great time, laughing and getting wet. But he is obviously still weary of anything that he thinks might be hot.

We are grateful to have Adam in our family, and we feel very blessed that he made it through that trial in one piece.