July 6, 2008

Chris saw all his weekend visitors one more time today before they left for home. After that, it was a pretty normal day of physical therapy followed by wound care. Today they did wound care on his donor sites (legs and middle of back). This makes the wound care more painful because those injuries are "partial thickness" or similar to second degree burns, which means the nerve endings are still all alive in the skin, causing more pain than the areas that were third degree or "full thickness" burns. Despite this, Chris did a great job of toughing it out. During wound care, Tiff and Earl are able to see what the grafts and donor sites look like and they say that the skin is looking a lot better.

The speech therapist stopped by today to see if Chris was swallowing correctly, and he is doing well enough that he can now swallow the ice chips he chews up. Before, he was having to chew them to wet his mouth, but then spit them out to prevent the liquid from getting into his lungs. Tomorrow they are going to conduct a special x-ray that allows them to watch liquids go down his throat in order to be able to ensure that they are reaching his stomach rather than his lungs. If that is successful, he'll be able to start drinking liquids. If his stomach is able to handle the liquids after 3 weeks with nothing in it, than he will be able to start eating food again. If everything goes perfectly, he may be able to enjoy his first food on Tuesday, which will be exactly 3 weeks since his last meal!

This afternoon, Chris walked around quite a bit, including up and down one flight of stairs. He is repeatedly doing more and more things on his own and is almost able to get up and down from the bed by himself. After all of this exercise, he should sleep really good tonight.

A lot of people have asked how long Chris will be in the hospital and what his life will be like once he is released. A lot of that depends on Chris and how hard he works and how quickly he heals. Judging by the last week, Chris should be able to beat any time expectations that are set for him. The hospital says that he is way ahead of schedule for recovering from this type of burn. Roughly, though, his schedule will go something like this:
1) Chris will remain in the Burn ward for 2 to 3 more weeks, continuing to focus on be able to eat, drink, heal his lungs and monitor his grafts. Also, he'll continue physical therapy at least once per day to make sure he keeps a full range of motion as he heals.
2) After being released, he and his family will go through a 2 week transition period. This period is designed to make sure that he and his family know how to care for the wounds and monitor his condition before taking it all on themselves. During the transition period, Chris may be moved to another area of the hospital or he may be able to stay in the hotel with his parents. This will depend on how well he is doing, but of course the Hyatts are hoping for the hotel option.
3) Once the transition period is over, Chris will be able to return home with his parents. For quite some time, he will have to do physical therapy in Elko twice per day. Eventually this requirement will drop to once per day.
4) In order to keep the scarring to a minimum, Chris will have to wear a pressure suit (essentially a specially designed tight suit) under his clothes for between a year and 18 months.

Chris has set his own goal of being home in only 3 weeks. He is very determined to accomplish this and uses some of his downtime to do extra physical therapy. Whether he makes it in 3 weeks or not, having this goal will surely help keep him focused.

Chris read this blog all the way through for the first time today. His parents had been reading him the comments that you have all left, but this was the first time that he has read through everything himself. Because he doesn't remember much about the first week or so in the hospital, some of it was new to him. His spirits were lifted by all of your comments. Today's picture is of Chris on his long walk. We just saw him this morning and he already looks even better!