Update ~ Wills burns and trip to UNL.

I do have to say that this day turned out better then we had ever expected! The night before Will was so scared to go to his appointment at the Burn Clinic. He knew that they were going to be taking off the pig skin that had not come off. They told us that if it had not fallen off by the appointment that it must have been deeper or infected under it whish would be what is keeping the burn from healing. Well he had a lot of pig skin still on him. So we all were a little nervous,

So we yesterday morning at 8:00am to make it there by 11:00am for his appointment. We made it by 4 minutes!! There was so much road construction. *sigh* Before we could leave though we had to change the dressings on Wills burns and trim up the pig skin. There was not much to trim but Will was very crabby which was because he was pretty nervous to go. He knew it was going to hurt when they took it off.

SO we loaded the Suburban with movies and a cooler for lunch, and off we went. We did have to stop for Will he was not feeling well. I believe his tummy was upset because he was nervous.

Croix relaxing watching a movie on our way.

We sent the other kids to the family waiting area because we figured it might be awhile. I am so grateful we have a 14 year old that can keep an eye on them while were were in the office. The clinic is in the hospital so they were in a closed room with t.v., games, puzzles and snacks..

We were finally called back and they started peeling off his pig skin and Will was like wow that didn’t hurt at all! *smile* But that was one of the only parts that did not hurt. Poor guy was so brave. They even told us that he is way quieter then the grown man that was before him. They got to his had and you could tell that it was not going to be fun but what they did was let him soak it in a tub of water to loosen it up a bit before they tried again.

Here he is soaking his hand.

Well they got it all off and we were amazed by how well he healed! God is so amazing! They told us to keep a few places covered until they were done healing and to lotion him up at least 3 time a day. He also needs to stay out of the sun for too long. That skin is baby skin and it will burn very easy. So they gave us what we needed and headed out for a picnic.

Croix, Vinny and Will being as cute as can be *smile*

After our picnic we headed over to the University of Nebraska Lincoln GO BIG RED!!! So we could go look around. When we got there there was a tour starting with a group of UNL hopefuls and they asked us if we wanted to join them so we went along for the tour. The kids had a blast! Especially Vinny who is a BIG Husker fan! If you remember his room. Here are some pictures of our tour. If you notice Brooke is not in many she refused to be pictured.

Statue of  Dr. Tom Osborne and his favorite player Brook Berringer

Standing in front of the national champion ship trophies.

Standing on the Big Red “N”

They were so excited to be standing where the Huskers play.

Croix running out for a pass!

 

One day I hope to be sitting in this stadium for a game with all our kiddos.

Here I have some pictures of what his burns look like now. They may not all look pretty but just a couple of weeks ago there was no skin there or little there.

Here is his right hand. You can see at the side of the palm is still open that is where his deepest burn was. you can see that as you look at all the fingers how well he has healed his skin back.

This is the right arm almost perfect! It is so neat how pink his new skin is.

This is his left arm. This one has a few areas that are not completely healed but it looks great. He still has some glue on the side of his arm where they glued the pig skin on.

Look at his amazing back!

As you can see God has blessed us so much in this healing process. Thank you so much for all of the prayers. Now one thing I am curious about is how much all of this will cost. I know we have amazing insurance that will cover pretty much all of it but I am still curious on how much it will cost. One person told me that one sheet of pig skin was $6,000 OUCH!!

If you remember Vince said he was going to tear down the fire pit when Will is able to help the kids and I are trying to talk him out of it. He just doesn’t want to be a fool he says if someone else get burned again. I am thinking of all the fun times we have had out there as a family sitting around it on a cool evening talking (which is hard these days because of texting, internet, and t.v) we laugh cook and just enjoy each others time. Am I wrong for still wanting to keep it. Will even still wants to keep it. I trust that Vince will make the right choice being the head of our family. I just wanted to make sure he knew it was still wanted. Maybe we can change it into something different out there that will still be inviting. 

   God Bless,

    Jen

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Praise the Lord Update ~ Wills Burns

Today there has been not one ask or need of pain meds!!! He is healing so amazingly. God has blessed us with amazing doctors and prayer warriors as friends.

As I unwrapped Will this morning I could see new skin a lot of it! Will even noticed that he is healing fast. He shows me where his pig skin is coming off (on its own the way it should). He was excited for me to trim it up. We left the house today which we are suppose to limit but we needed an outing so we headed downtown to get a free hot dog but they had ran out before we got there so we had pizza. Then we went to good ole Wally world as my dad calls it, to spend some birthday money. Will is very board at home but he loves his Legos so he wanted to spend his money on some new Legos.

They have taken over our living room. *smile*

I am going to thank you all again for prayers they have been so amazing! I know we still have a long road to go with the healing process but today was amazing! The mommy in is over joyed! God is so Great!!!

   God Bless,

     Jen

Update ~ Will’s day 4 & 5 at home

Well I have to say God is so great! He has been here with us this whole way. He is healing Will so quickly. He does not look pretty but we can see the skin growing each day. It is so amazing.

We have had a couple of bumps in the road. Like when he went to sleep the other night and he somehow took off a his bandage off his hand which thank God nothing happened to it because it is the most severe and the also the hand is the hardest to heal. He then must have been itchy on his right elbow because when we looked in on him in the morning the pig skin on his right elbow was off and his left hand was a little bloody. Then we went to look at his back and some how the pig skin on his back had rolled up. Well you can imagine our thoughts that ran thru our minds about having to have things redone. I prayed a lot that morning and my prayers were answered. We had to trim it all up and keep it covered with some medicine on it to keep it moist which would help the healing process. We did take him into the local clinic for help with the trimming and to help us clean him up.

During the day has been pretty good. He plays good with legos.

He has also stated painting his model with his left hand

Vinny was helping him. See all the cards on his shelf he loves them!

Here is what his burns look like now.

If you can see the the elbow area that he had taken off the pig skin. It looks kinda like “road rash” Which means it has healed so fast! Praise the Lord.

Here is his right hand this loos actually really good. I know it does not look good but it is.

This is the best looking spot he has.

Here is his back. The pig skin on most of his back has came off. This looks good too.

We thank you all so very much for all of your thoughts and prayers. We have felt them. God has provided in so many ways during this journey. With all these extra expenses we have prayed for direction and He has shown us love from our church family. They have brought us over meals which has help us so much. I can’t thank them enough. God will always provide if you just have faith.

    God Bless,

     Jen

Update ~ Wills burns day 3 at home (graphic pictures)

Day 3 of being home was really not home because Will had a doctors appointment in Lincoln. We all had to be up and out of the house by 7:30am. Well if you were to stay with us for a couple of day you would realize that well we are not a morning family. But we were up and out of the house by then. There was a lot of road construction on the way there and we were 10 minutes late. But we made it.

Croix and Will playing in the office

We were called into the room and I have to say yet again these people are amazing! Well they were not so amazing making my Will cry while taking off the bandages, But that is the momma bear in me, *smile* They told us that the grafts looked good. Just moist and they need to dry. Which is what we are working on for the next week. We have new orders now which is to keep him unwrapped as much as possible. We need to bandage him if we leave but we were told to stay close to home because he needs that pig skin to dry and start to come off and we have to trim off the dried parts (not looking forward to that). Poor guy he has some major anxiety right now about anyone coming to close and hurting him. This is going to be a long few weeks. *sigh* God is with us.

After his appointment we w\had promised Brooke that she could go to the mall to spend her money she had saved. We did that and ate at the mall to next we had promised the boys that we would take tem to Toys R Us to look around. See we are so sheltered that when we go to Toys R Us we play and leave with out buying because it so overwhelming the amount of toys *smile* We then headed home.

After we got home I dropped off the boys and Vince and Brooke and I went to a Visitation of a dear friend of ours 10 year old boy. The strength that I seen from the parents was so amazing. You could see the trust that they had in God that he had a plan.

We came home and found that some of our sweet neighbors had brought over some cookies and a nerf gun. Will was pretty excited about that. Then Vince received a text message from a family from church that there was some cards for us on our back deck they had placed there that the children in Sunday School made for him. That was so sweet. He has a shelf in his room that goes along 2 walls and well it is filled with 18 cards from his friends from church. *smile*

Isn't this so sweet.

Well now came bed time and we had to trim off some of the dried pig skin and well it took us an hour and a half to get him to even come close to him because he knew what we had to do and he was afraid it was going to hurt. He is really having some anxiety and we ask for prayers for this. Well Vince had to finally hold him down while I cut it. After I cut it he was like Wow that didn’t hurt and all was right with the world. Now it is 12:30 am and I am finally finishing this blog post that I started at 9pm before we started with getting him ready for bed. We have to cover him back up before bed and if we have to leave. That’s not the hard part it is watching him beg us not to trim the skin.

I wanted to show you all what his burns look like with the pig skin on. If you have weak stomach please do not scroll down any more.

This is a picture of his back as you can see. He does have a few spots that do not have the pig skin on because either it ripped off in just movement or they just did not put it there.

This is of his right hand

Here is his right arm he also has burns on hi elbow too which I did not take a picture of

This is his left arm. Look at that smile.

If you see how the edges of the skin is peeling up that is where we have to trim .

Again I ask for prayers for his anxiety and for Vince and I to know how to help him understand what we are doing is for the best and that we will not hurt him as we are treating him. This right here has been so hard for us. I praise the Lord that he is not as bad as he could have been. I know God has a plan I just hate that it has to be so painful for one of my children. He knows all.

   God Bless,

     Jen

Will’s burns update ~ 1st and 2nd day home

God is so amazing! Will is doing pretty good for what he has went thru. He is in good spirits even though he is in pain. I can see it but he will not tell you that he hurts. I love that he is tough but I wish that he would just let me know when he is uncomfortable. I know that he is in pain pretty much all the time but the medicine make him more comfortable.

Wills first full day home was pretty up and down. We had some really good moments and some not so good. One not so good moment was when I was helping him getting dressed for the day. He is not able to take a bath so we have to give him a sponge bath so I helped him get out of his clothes and I helped him wash up but letting him do much of it to give him the sense  that  he can do things on his own, I was looking at his back bandage and it was shifting and not covering his grafts and was causing him pain when I pulled off his pants. My heart dropped when he screamed out. His P.J.’s had stuck to it. So I called up my father and asked him to bring an ACE bandage to wrap it around him. I was so nervous fixing his back bandages but all went well. I had to move them around to cover his grafts and then I wrapped his torso with the ACE bandage. He looked up at me afterwards and told me how I was better then the nurses and that didn’t hurt one bit, and how his back felt better with that wrap on. *smile*.

Some Great friends of ours brought over a meal for us to enjoy. Love you Matt and Julie *smile*

I also had to call the hospital and ask them about Will being dizzy a lot. They are so helpful *smile* God really gave those people in the burn unit the hearts for this kind of care.  Si we decided to bring down his dose a little bit and that helps so much. He went for 9.6 ml every 3 hours to 8 ml ever 5 hours.

Here are some pictures of day 1

Sleeping after a long hard day.

Day 2 went a little better. He was not dizzy at all today. Yet his pain was managed. It is Sunday but we decided not to go to church. We were a little nervous someone would bump into him and he would hurt him. So we hung out at home. I got caught up on laundry. We also needed to clean up the yard from all the fireworks trash and to take doe the volleyball net we put up for the BBQ. Later that afternoon Vince went to race. He took Vinny with him. They left and it was just Will , Brooke, Croix at home. A couple from the church I used to go to came by and brought some food. How sweet they were.

Brooke had Bible study and our couples bible study was tonight too. So the boys and I went the church and enjoyed some time with friends. Most of the people that were there on the 4th were here at bible study. It was nice to enjoy Gods word. We are studying James and it happen to be about trial that God lets us go thru to strengthen our faith. What a great topic.

Well I close the day with  a prayer request for our trip to see the doctor (2 1/2 hr drive) to be safe and that Wills grafts are doing well.

Will and Vinny playing checkers.

     God Bless

      Jen

One of the scariest days of my life Will was burned.

The 4th of July was not quite what we expected this year. We thought we would have our normal BBQ and fireworks with friends and family. It all started out like it normally does. We were pretty excited about this year we built a fire pit that we have been cooking smores and enjoying time sitting around a fire at night. Great family times. So Vince lit that and lit the grill to get the food started. People started showing up so we started bring food out and some of the kids were lighting firecrackers. I went inside to get some more food and I heard a rustle and a scream and I ran out the back door. One of our friends yells at me “CALL 911!! Will fell in the fire pit"!!” At that second I look to the left Vince yells at me “get the keys”! I get the keys run the the Suburban and we were off to the hospital. We made it there in I think 5 minutes so waiting for 911 was not an option. I did not get a good look at him till we started walking in to the hospital and I was so scared. I saw his back bubbling his right arm and hand had not much skin and his left fore arm the skin was gone too. This was a test of my will power not to turn into a ball of tears. I knew that would not help anyone. God was with us the whole time I could feel him.
It felt like hours for the doctor to come in and the morphine to even help his pain. Knowing that we live in a small town I was nervous about them treating him because they are not a burn unit. The doctor came in and he said right away he was going to call the burn unit in Lincoln. They called them and had them on a video conference with us. The looked at his burns and said that we need to come there. Which is 2 1/2 hours away! So they gave him another shot of morphine and sent us on our way.
We drove there making pretty good time all the while not speeding. *smile* The whole way we prayed I knew that there we so many people praying for us. We had left our friends an family at our house and I knew they were praying for us and Will. I know I could feel it.
So we got there and I do have to say that that hospital was amazing! They already had a room ready for us. As we were in there we seen kids come thru with burns from fireworks. Next came a very hard thing was when we had to take him into a very sterile looking room and a table that looked like it came out a morgue. It was medal with a drain all the way around it. They then told us they were going to wash him with water and not scrub him but we had to leave. As we were walking with the other nurse I could hear him crying. That was so hard. We then had to answer questions and wait for him to come to the room. When he did he was not crying he was wrapped up and comfortable. They had given him more morphine.
The doctor came and said that they would take him to the O.R. to do the scrubbing and then put pig skin on the burns. He said he does not want to do it while he was awake not only because it would be hard for him to stay still but because he did not want to traumatize him. Then it was time to get some sleep but that did not happen. Not only is it hard to sleep in a hospital but when you are nervous that he is in to much pain we could not sleep.

Before surgery

8am came and it was time for his surgery. That was hard to take him to the room and tell him we loved him and then go sit in the waiting room for the doctor to come in. They told us it would take about 45 minutes. And hour and a half later still not done. The nurse came in and said he is still working on him but not because there was any surprises but because he was doing a very meticulous job. We were grateful for that. His hand needs to heal well so he can use it fully.
So about 20 or 30 minutes after that the Doctor came in and talked to us about everything and that all went well. Then he told us to wait for the nurse to come get us when they had gotten him all settled . Well about 10 minutes latter a different nurse came in and said that Will was having a hard time getting pain under control and they thought he would do better with us in there. So we went down the hall got gowned up all the while we could hear him screaming and crying. We went in there and I was not ready for him to be in so much pain. So mommy instinct kicked in and we went to trying to calm him. Nothing was working until we started to whisper into his ear telling him to breath in and breath out. He started to finally focus on something little as breathing and he started to calm and  he then the morphine started working.

Sleeping after surgery

After all was right with the medicine and he took a little nap Great Grandma and Great Aunt Rose came to visit him. The rest of the day went pretty well. He ate and got up and walked around the floor. As long as his pain meds were on time he was in good spirits.

Look at that big smile!

Then later that evening Aunt Becky and Uncle Matt came over to see him. He was very happy to see them. They even brought him a comic book and a movie to watch to pass the time by. He was getting a little snappy and kept saying that he was not in pain and I finally asked the nurse to go ahead and give him some and with in 15 minutes he was smiling and wanting to go for a walk. Becky Will and I went for a walk and he decided that he was going to loose the old ladies and was trying to lap us. It was so sweet him being silly and giving all the nurses the “Will smile” I believe it was flirting *smile*.
Next day was his birthday. Poor guy had to spend part of his Birthday in the hospital and not feeling the best. Dad and I tried to still make it special. The nurses decided that they were going to do the same. He received presents from the staff and a birthday cupcake. It was so sweet.

His presents

Here he is working on coloring with his left hand.

During this time we were waiting for the doctor to come in and check on his burns. When he came in they took back into the first wash room he was in before and yet again they told us to leave. He was so smiley when he went and and then again we could here him crying. It was so heart breaking. After a lot of tears he came out not too happy. Then we found out they had to put new pig skin on his back.
When he came back to the room he got dressed so we could leave *smile*. Then some other people showed up to see Will. They brought a monster truck for him. Which he loves *smile*.

 

All dressed and ready to go home

So then we headed out but first we asked Will what he wanted to do he said he wanted to see the new Spiderman movie so that’s what we did! After the movie we decided to drive by the University. He then seen some statues and wanted to take a picture with them.

he is pretending to catch a football

headed home and asked where he wanted to eat so we ate a Ruby Tuesday’s. yummmmmy

At Ruby Tuesday’s

After that we went home. But first we stopped by and picked up a new bike for his birthday present! When we got home Brooke and our sitter Kariee got him a ice cream cake for him. We sang to him and went to bed.It was a long couple of days.

Will and his cake. There is and awesome young lady behind him Thank you Kariee for saying with the kids and be so awesome!

So we are home now and recovering. I am not sure how long it will take for him to be back to 100%. We are praying it will be quick and easy recovery.
I will keep you all updated on his recovery.
    God Bless,
      Jen