Joshua's Burn

As I share this story I am so thankful for how "minor" (in the long run) that this incident turned out to be. I know it could have been much worse. Joshua was cooking up some ramen noodles on a Sunday afternoon. He has been cooking for a couple of year now. He usually uses a small pan and makes just a serving for himself. When they are done he will scoop out the noodles and leave the pan full of water on the stove to cool. Well this particular day he made some for his sister as well, so he used a bigger pan and then for some reason he decided to dump the hot water into the sink. As he was trying to lift the pan to the sink, he didn't lift it high enough and the water came pouring down his bare stomach (he didn't have a shirt on). Jay and I were in the other room and heard the screaming and we both came running. I yanked Joshua's shorts off and Jay was checking to see how hot the water had been. It took awhile but we got Joshua calmed and laid him down upstairs on our bed. We kept putting cool rags on his belly and then also Aloe.

The interesting part about this whole story is I that Jay and I were gauging our reactions off of one another. He is always accused of over reacting and running to the Dr. for every little thing. I stay calm during the "crisis" (and then tend to lose it afterwards). Well Jay didn't seem to think we needed to race to the Dr. I thought maybe we should but didn't say anything. Joshua calmed down and fell asleep for a little while. So for the week we kept lathering it with aloe and watching it. By Saturday the blisters were starting to pop and I decided to take him to Next Care. They sent me to the burn center right away, OK now that freaked me out so I called Jay (he was at a conference) went and picked him up and we headed to the Maricopa burn center. Let me just say it is a great place that I never want to visit again.

This of course confirmed for Jay and I that if one of us thinks "Dr. visit" than we go! I say all that though to say this. Joshua's burn was 2ND degree, no infection so he was able to be treated and released. It just looked really bad because of the blisters popping. So they did scrape away all the dead skin. But we weren't "horrible" parents that didn't take care of it because I was feeling guilty! So they sent us home with bandages and goop to put on it and scheduled a follow up visit (which was great and they just told us to put lotion on it and keep out of direct sun light for a year and there should be minimal skin discoloration)


I did learn however that if anyone ever gets a major grease burn they should go get treated right away because after you clean off the grease it will continue to burn for up to 24 hours! (So glad we do not cook with grease or oil)


The other thing I wanted to share was at the end of our visit Joshua got to go to "Andrea's closet and pick out a toy. This was a little storage closet FILLED with all sorts of games, toys and books. He was able to pick whatever he wanted. I came home and looked up the website and was so touched by it. Be sure and check out their website.

Well here he is:
This picture was taken right after the scraping of the dead skin. I need to take another picture of what it looks like now because you can barely see the marks now, praise the Lord!