Saturday, Jun. 24, 2006 - 8:14 a.m.

A Visit to the Burn Ward

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I visited my friend Randy in the burn ward of Memorial Hermann Hospital two days ago.  This is just some of my experience.

Randy is basically totally bandaged from the top of his head to his thighs. Both arms are completely wrapped and each finger is individually wrapped, and the thickness of the bandages makes it appear that his arms and fingers are immensely swollen, which, they probably are to begin with. He doesn't have his glasses and would not be able to wear them anyway, so reading is difficult for him. Knowing this, I wrote really in large letters on the inside, which fortunately, he was able to read on his own, albit with some difficulty.   In all honesty, this was painful and difficult to watch. When I got there, Liam Helms was there, as he has been every day helping out, God bless him, as well as Randy's girlfriend, and his mother, for whom my heart aches terribly.  He is pretty doped up, but not on morphine, but rather Vicodin, which I took as a good sign that his pain was being managed well. I have say, it was a shock to first walk in and see him like this, but, I became more comfortable as time went on. He is able to speak, but has to make a concentrated effort to do so. When he speaks, it is slow, deliberate and somewhat slurred, almost like someone who is drunk.  There are times he babbles nonsensical stuff.  I think at one point he started babbling some Christmas songs.  His lips are still burned of course and his face is still swollen, but, I could tell it was him.  He didn't look distorted. There are parts of his face that look more as if he has the worst peeling sunburn of his life.  The docs even say there will be minimal scarring on his face.  His ears are covered in bandages and that is frustrating for him, because he is unable to hear very well.  Both of his arms, like I said before are completely bandaged, and each finger bandaged separately.  This is where the worst burns are.  The bodily fluids such as pus and blood can be seen seeping through the finger bandages and he does often complain (for lack of a better word) that his fingers hurt.  His hands have to be kept in splints to keep his fingers from curling up while he is asleep, and therefore preventing that skin from fusing his fingers together and his fingers from being permanently curled. 

When I got there, they had him sitting in a chair, and I had to put on rubber gloves, a plastic apron and a hair covering.  Nothing over my mouth though which surprised me.  Liam told him I was there, and he was visibly happy and kept saying "Stacy Bakri?!" "Stacy Bakri?!" And he wanted to hug me, as best he could.  I didn't know where I could touch him, lest it hurt, so it was awkward for me to hug him back, but he realized this and just said to me, "It's OK, I'm not contagious."

Throughout the visit he had moments of complete clarity and wanted to know what was going on with faire and how people were doing. But he also would slip into moments of not being sure why he was there. So Liam would have to explain to him why he was there and what was going on. There are only 2 people allowed in the room at a time.

I learned something interesting during my visit.  A burn victim expends as much energy healing, as a sprinter does running several sprints a day.  To put this in perspective, his caloric intake has to be 5,000 calories a day.  In fact, the nurse said that if there is anything special he wanted to eat, to go ahead and get it for him.  I KNOW that made him happy.  He has two large windows in his room and wants one to be a McD's drive through, and the other to be a KFC drive through.  Burn victims also tire very easily because of the massive amounts of energy their bodies are using to heal, so they nap frequently.  His nurse said that Randy is being a very cooperative, and compliant patient and is very cognizant of his required participation in his recovery.  She also made a point to mention that self esteem during burn victim recovery is extremely important.  Anything that he is able to do on his own, he needs to be allowed to do because it lessens his dependence on others doing things for him, and lessens frustration.  I can speak from first hand experience to this, as I had to do everything for Tarik after he burned both of his hands 10 years ago.  I had to wash, feed, bath, dress, brush his teeth, every thing for him.  And I KNOW it was humbling, and humiliating and a real blow to his self esteem during that time.

Randy is already starting to develop some cabin fever, and I don't blame him.  I believe he is allowed to take short walks, which he needs to do, and he mentioned a couple of times that he needs to keep moving all of his extremities in order to keep his muscles from tightening up.  He is also voluntarily doing stretches in bed, albeit they are in slow motion, and I believe he is WILLING himself into a rapid recovery.  He has apparently show vast improvement each and every day and is healing and recovering quite rapidly.

Randy is allowed visitors, however, no more than two people are allowed in his room at any given time.  And while he would love to have everyone come and visit, unfortunately, this cannot be the case.  The more people who go into that room just increases the chance for infection at this critical time.  However, he will be having a graft next week on at least one of his arms, and following that, the chance for infection will drop somewhat.  Until then, we can only send him cards and balloons.  No flowers.


Song Virus du Jour:  "Me and Bobby McGee" ~ Written by Kris Kristofferson, performed by Janis Joplin.


Useless Trivia du Jour:  See above about the caloric intake of a burn vic.

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