It's Healing GREAT!

Tuesday morning we headed to The Burn Center bright and EARLY.  I've learned that early appointments are better for little ones because waiting rooms tend to be cleaner early in the day and doctors are usually running pretty close to on time early in the day.  

We showed up at 8:00am after a brief moment of getting turned around in a not so great part of town.  Unloaded ourselves and headed up to the appointment.  The waiting room was packed and there were several kids waiting to be seen.  We checked in and waited 45 minutes.  I almost always bring Olive in her little umbrella stroller because she's just too big to hold for a long time, I needed to have free hands to work on paperwork and she's happier having her own space.  I had lots of snacks, her favorite toys and Bun-Bun her beloved bunny.

I went up to check on the status of our appointment and they said they'd call us up shortly.  We did eventually get called up after we swapped burn stories with other fellow moms in the waiting room.  The nurse asked me a few questions about how the week had gone and then asked me to hold Olive so she could remove her bandage.  

I was a little anxious about how fast she was trying to get things removed.  I made a comment about her being gentle and taking really good care of Olive's hand hoping she'd take my not so subtle hint.  She seemed pretty unphased and ended up hurting Olive.  I felt awful and Olive was definitely in pain.  The nurse assured me everything was fine, but the fact that she handed me gauze to hold on Olive's hand made me think otherwise.

The bleeding stopped and we were left to look at the windows and avoid sticking anything into the million open wall sockets around the room.  The doctor came in a little later and Olive was in love.  The lady seemed so young and Olive was in heaven.  She was babbling to her and let the doctor examine her hand.  I was feeling anxious because I had no idea how things were supposed to look at this point.

She looked up at me and said, "It's healing GREAT!  Her hand looks just like we hoped it would and she is healing really well on her own.  We are going to bandage it up and will see you next week to start talking about topical treatments."  I felt a big sigh of relief and asked if it was safe to say that she would not need any skin grafts.  She said that everything was looking dry and was no longer red which were both very good signs for healing.  She went on to say that she would be surprised if she would need any more procedures at this point.

The same nurse came back in and I was a little leery of her doing a great job with Olive's bandage.  She seemed like a different person.  She was very gentle, sweet with Olive and things went GREAT.  I think she might have felt bad for how things went when she was in the room earlier.  She gave us extra bandages and sent Olive to the toy treasure chest to pick out a toy for being so good.  Olive didn't know what to do with all the little trinkets so she did what any toddler would do and started collecting a PILE of things.  We laughed and picked out two little things to take with us.

I felt such relief and was smiling from ear to ear as we left the office.  We have a follow up appointment next week where they will just take another look and rebandage her.  Her new bandage is about one fourth of the size of her old one and is much more manageable.  She hasn't messed with it at all and it seems like her hand is protected so it can continue to heal.

I feel like our prayers have been answered for fast healing and no need for any more surgery.  Hooray for fast healing toddlers and for healthy baby skin!!