Putting this one off

This is a hard one.  I've been putting off writing this for 2 weeks.  It was a mommy moment I don't care to ever relive.  Although I'm sure I will in some form or fashion.

Zeke burned his hand.  Like really bad.  

The short and the long of it is that our kitchen was a little out of sorts because we had lost 90% of our power the day before.  The coffee pot was moved, the stool was left down, and Zeke was not in our sight.  On Friday morning (Halloween),  I was hanging with the older 2 kids in the living room trying to wake up, and Luke was walking out the front door when we heard the cry.  All mom's know that the pain cry is different than all other cries.  Luke ran back into the kitchen to see Zeke standing on the stool below the coffee pot.  His hand was red, but did not look horrible.  But I knew by the cry that it was bad.  Luke said I think he's going to be okay (nothing against dad's - Lord knows Luke is a great one, but they don't have mama bear instincts).  I grabbed Zeke, grabbed my keys and raced out the door to the urgent care clinic in town.  My poor baby did the pain cry the whole way there.  I did the mom of a baby in pain cry the whole way there too.  The doctors and nurses were great.  They gave him some Tylenol with Codeine for the pain.  I was hoping they would give me something too.  =)

But it didn't stop.

He cried.  I cried.

He cried more, I cried more.  

He didn't want to be in my arms, he didn't want me to put him down.  He couldn't be consoled.  He hurt.  

It was killing me. 

Finally they decided to give him more meds for the pain.  

While there, the redness of the burn got more intense, and then large white streaks appeared where the burn must have been most intense.  And a couple tiny blisters appeared.  By the way, the burn was on the back of his hand.  We think he grabbed the handle and pulled the coffee pot toward him and burned the back of his hand on the glass.

The nurse cleaned the burn and bandaged it up really well.  We got a prescription and went home.  And slept.

While on the pain meds he actually seemed to be doing quite well.  I had pictured Zeke and I having a quiet evening at home that night, but we decided to go ahead and stick with our plans to go to the Candy Zone at the church.

Here is our little stinker bandaged up.

We were given instructions to clean the burn every day and to redress it with fresh bandages.  I wasn't home the next day when Zeke took off his dressings, so Luke did it solo.  I was secretly glad, because I was really dreading looking at it.  Luke said that it didn't look too bad.

But the next day I didn't escape the duties.  

When we took off the dressing, I almost puked and passed out.  It looked awful.  The burn was bright red and the white areas had swollen and filled with what looked like fluid.  It just looked sooooo painful.  

That was the worst of it.  A few days later the swelling went down, and the skin looked melted on top with bits of raw flesh peaking out underneath.

The picture below is at the end of that stage - and not nearly the worst of it.  It was still gross, but looking so much better by then.  Thus the picture.  I couldn't bring myself to take a picture in the earlier stages. 

This last one is nearly 2 weeks later when it was really starting to heal.  You can't tell from the picture, but the new skin was still pretty raw.  It has only been the last 2 days where his skin is actually starting to look good.

Zeke was really a trooper.  After he got those 2 doses of pain meds he was great.  Much better than mommy.  I kept him on those for about 3 days, then he didn't seem to need it anymore.  The dressings hardly bothered him.  He hated that we would tape a plastic bag over his hand while he ate (to keep his bandages clean), but other than that, he acted like his normal self.  He became a "lefty" very quickly, and did just about everything with his left hand with no problem.

I am just so thankful that he is okay, and that the burns weren't worse than they were.  He could have poured scorching coffee all over his body just as easily.  I thank God that he did not.

This is just one more thing that makes me hold him a little tighter, and a little longer each day.

The End.