Scariest Day of Motherhood (thus far)

The Monday of Thanksgiving week goes down as my scariest day as a mother thus far.  We were going through our normal morning routines getting ready for work and school.  We had the fireplace on for one of the first times in our new house that morning because it was pretty cold out.  I was in our closet getting dressed and Jimmy was in the den with the boys and trying to dress Brayden on the couch.  All of a sudden I heard the most horrifying screams from Kyle and came running out.

By the time I got out, Jimmy had Kyle at the freezer trying to soothe something.  I quickly gathered that Kyle had touched our fireplace and burned his hand.  At that moment Jimmy thought it was just one but I started examining and both hands were affected and literally each passing second they started looking worse and worse.  I was a bit in panic mode, unsure what to do so we were googling what to do with burns as we ran water on them.  We did a whole bunch of home remedies within the next minute or two before I looked at Jimmy and said we had an emergency situation.  Also realize that this entire time Kyle is beyond consolable, screaming, and thrashing his hands around in pain.  Knowing that I couldn't get Kyle to the ER on my own, we called 911.

Not very long after, standing in our foyer, was A LOT of grown men - firemen, paramedics, policemen - and everybody was standing there staring at my screaming, thrashing baby. :(  There wasn't a whole lot they could do because Kyle was too young for them to administer anything.  They tried wrapping his hands so he wouldnt' harm the blisters (which were enormous all over his hands and fingers on both hands) but he quickly pulled it all off.  Kyle was so distraught about what to do about his hurting hands.  After their typical questioning of what happened for the record, Kyle and I loaded up into the ambulance to get us to the hospital.  That was a very interesting ride to say the least!  They had no way to strap in Kyle so I was strapped to the bed and essentially just told to hold onto him tightly, which was extremely hard given how much pain he was in.  It was so sad and hard to watch.  He had gotten himself so tired from all the crying that he would stop for a brief second and then he'd just start shaking his hands and start screaming again due to the pain.

Once we got to the hospital, you have to do the standard questions from the nurses and then FINALLY he got some relief.  He was administered pain meds and given a cold saline bath to soak his hands.  That bath was the relief he so despearately needed.  Now I know in the future but hopefully we never have to use that knowledge again.  After a while at the hospital, they wrapped up his hands with an antiobiotic and pain cream and put socks over and gave us prescriptions.  They also told us that due to the location of the burns and coverage of the burns on the hands we needed to follow up with Parkland Burn Center because with burns on your extremities you run the risk of them healing constricted and limiting movement.

Finally found relief and almost instantly passed out exhausted and he did NOT want to remove his hands from that bath for any reason

Kyle passed out in the car on the way home and that's when I lost it.  I finally had a moment for all of the events to sink in and to see my poor baby bandaged up with a fear of long term issues and I couldn't stop the waterworks if I tried.  Jimmy dropped Kyle and I off at home, took Brayden to school and went to get Kyle's prescriptions.  I managed to get Kyle upstairs in his bed asleep.  The poor boy was so tired.  I also laid down while he slept knowing I'd probably need the rest to handle the rest of the day because Jimmy really needed to go to work.

Thank God for children's seemingly unending joy though... when Kyle awoke he gave me this precious smile while being fed lunch.  That was a relief for sure!

The next week was tough because a toddler who is curious about everything and wants to play with everything but has no usable hands doesn't mesh well.  There was a lot of me following him around the house "helping" him play - opening doors, toys etc.  Also, during this time I was also getting ready to host Thanksgiving at my house which looking back I was probably crazy for keeping it at my house but I had been so excited about hosting in our new house. 

This is the only picture I got of his hands and quite honesty this does not do it justice at all.  You can see the large blisters on his finger tips but that's how large the blisters were on the hands too but here they just look red.  The entire hands and fingers were covered in extremely large blisters.  

Playing around the house without hands... still could get in and out of his favorite toy, the car, on his own (mostly)

Love that regardless of not being able to do things for himself or feed himself he was still in great spirits!

Silly :)

The day before Thanksgiving we had our first appointment at Parkland Burn Center.  Parkland is an interesting place to visit, that's for sure.  And difficult to get to.  Anyway, the doctors examined his hands, popped a couple of the very large blisters to try to get him to use his hands more, and showed us how to wrap in a way that he can still use his hands.  Prior to this the only way to keep bandages on was to cover with socks, and tape the socks on his arm.  But, in order to utilize his hands consistently which would keep them from healing constricted he needed bandages that allowed independent movement.  Changing his bandages daily was not a fun task over the next several weeks but we got pretty good at it at the end.  Also, very thankful Kyle loves water so much because bath time was when we got him to really use his hands by putting the little tub from his saline bath in the bathtub with sterile water to splash around with his hands.  

We went back to Parkland for a follow up the following week and heard the great news that he was healing just fine and we did not need additional phyical therapy.  We also got cleared from having to bandage them even though they still were blistery and yucky but he was free to use them as normal.  It probably took another two weeks for his hands to look somewhat "normal"; however, his palms and fingertips still look more red than they were previously but they said that will fade over the next 6 months to a year.  Aside from the redness, by Christmas you wouldn't know based on how he acted which was a huge blessing. 

At Parkland in the play room of the burn center

The beautiful flowers our great friends Jackie and Jared sent us to try to brighten up our week.  Love them! :)

That first day this happened I had Jimmy pick up a fireplace screen on his way home.  Not sure if you can tell in the picture but our fireplace is a totally enclosed glass fireplace.  Even the firemen were shocked how hot it got because looking at it you would assume it is double paned or something to the point that the outside wouldn't get hundreds of degrees hot.  We have found multiple lawsuits online of other kids who have done what Kyle did with these types of fireplaces.  Thankfully we were apparently one of the luckier ones.  Also, to note, Kyle is now terrified of fire or of any hot air.  If he feels hot air blow on him he will freak out.  I wonder if this will be a lasting fear or if it will fade as we get further away from the event.