Burns Update, 23/3/05

1. Another appointment with the burns unit, and I had a good look at the injury for the first time. It’s a full thickness burn, meaning the top two layers of skin has suffered significant damage, as well as underlying tissue, muscle and tendon. Nerve endings are also severed, so it’s generally not too painful. The third layer of skin has the look of a sausage. The thin, gourmet type (you know, with the herbs and stuff) of sausage — tight, with spots of stuff. Apparently those red spots are the skin rejuvenating underneath and pushing their way back up to the top. With the dead two layers gone from the burn it looks like those cutaway mechanical drawings, with a very obvious chunk missing. It’s really quite disgusting.

2. The burnt area was also a lot larger than I’d previously thought. It covers about two thirds of the length of her index finger, and patches on her other fingers. The nurses all called it a “significant injury”, and it seems almost indefinite that a skin graft will be necessary. Applying the dressing seems (mercifully) easy, just as well since I’ll have to do that on Sunday, and the dressing itself is interesting. It’s sticky, and covered with a gel that contains an enzyme that, like saliva, breaks down dead skin. That way whatever dead skin the body can get rid of is removed when the dressing comes off. The marvels of modern medicine.

3. I don’t understand how people lived with an injury like this before skin grafting was perfected. Skin grafts are only done when the body can’t heal the injury on it’s own, so how were people treated? You can’t just leave it, it’d get infected. Amputation? That’s a scary thought, that you’d lose a body part because of a burn. I’m still struggling to comprehend the seriousness of burns, but it is much, much more serious than I had previously thought. It’s enough to make you eat cold foods forever.

Comments

  1. It’s good to hear that things were not as bad as they could be. You are right that before fairly recent advances in burn treatment technology, it was not uncommon for infection to set in, followed by sepsis and not uncommonly, death. I am sure you are being advised to keep an eye out for fever or anything else indicative of infection by your girlfriends physicians. Best of luck to you girlfriend and yourself and good healing.

    Bryan

    Comment by Bryan William Jones — March 25, 2005 @ 5:44 am

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