Audrey's Accident

Ok so we finally had our first real serious accident and it was a doozy! It has been a really rough couple of weeks around our house and if we never see a catastrophe of this magnitude again that will be . . .well . . . GREAT!

So on the evening of Wednesday August 19th Savannah and Audrey were out riding bikes (so I thought) and I was upstairs in the kitchen making dinner. All of a sudden I heard the door to the house from the garage open and Audrey is screaming/crying - I knew in an instant this was not a stick a Hannah Montana Band-Aid on it sort of deal. Let me back up - this happened about 6:15ish at night and Larren had gotten home about 10 minutes before (thank heavens, sometimes he is not home that early but thankfully this night he was) and was in changing clothes, so I yelled for him and he came running out. Seriously I don't want to describe what we was but it was ugly, and basically the whole top of her right hand was badly burned.

Come to find out they were not riding bikes but had decided to get on the treadmill, which is in the garage and play on it. They were taking turns walking on it and Audrey lost her balance fell and burned the top of her left forearm (fairly minor) and the top of her right hand (really bad). Her left forearm landed on the top of the track and was not burned as bad because she was able to lift it off. However, her right hand somehow got trapped under the track and was run over repeatedly by the track. Thankfully Savannah reacted quickly and pulled the emergency release button and stopped the treadmill so Audrey could free her hand. If she had not thought to do that and did it so quickly I can't imagine how much worse the damage would have been! Good job Savannah, way to think fast and take care of your sister! Savannah experienced a lot of guilt since she was the instigator and I felt really bad for her, but we talked through it and I praised her for her quick thinking. She has been so sweet to Audrey in helping her navigate her lack of a useable hand. That has been so nice to see, I love to see care and compassion between them.

We rushed her to the Pediatrician, who wrote us a prescription told us to bandage it for the night and said they would get us into a specialist the next day. The next day we went to Wound Care at the hospital to have both burns dressed and bandaged and met with the first Plastic Surgeon, he recommended skin grafts the very next day, which would have been Friday the 21st. We were nervous because we wanted a second opinion with the Hand Surgeon the Pediatrician had recommended. We held off on the surgery until we could consult the Hand Surgeon. We met with the him on Friday the 21st and his recommendation was the same, we felt more comfortable with him preforming the surgery since he is a hand specialist and the injury was to her hand.

She had the surgery on Monday August 24th at 7:00am. It was the most nerve-wracking time of my life. I was so stressed out with worry. The doctor took the "donor skin" from the outer side of her left thigh. The surgery went well, the graft covers the top of her hand, below the knuckle on her ring finger and all the way down her pinkie. The doctor thinks there may be a possibility of further procedures needing to be done later as her hand grows as a skin graft won't grow like normal skin. He also said for the healing process in the beginning she would complain more about the donor sight (leg) than her hand and that has definitely been the case. It has been so hard to watch her in pain and suffering, it has been awful for me! She was so cute and groggy after surgery, at one point the nurse asked her if she wanted a popsicle or a juice and Audrey stared at her as if she had never heard those two words before in her life, it was really cute and funny and I could tell my Audrey was in there because finally she grew frustrated of trying to figure out what she was asking and said "I just want to go to bed!"

In all honesty though she has been a real trooper, this had been a really hard thing to go through especially being so little, but she has really tried very hard to be a good sport. Today actually was the first day of school and she is right handed and she has no use of her right hand, and she can't go to recess or PE, but she a taking it all in stride and smiling her way through this as only Audrey could! I love her sweet nature, her ever positive outlook and the fact that she is too happy to ever really be sad! One good thing to come from this is because of the skin taken from her leg, she can't wear pants because they would rub the donor sight, so she has to wear skirts or dresses every day - a dream come true for my little girlie girl! She is in absolute heaven! It is going to be a project getting her to wear pants again once the leg heals, she is loving this side effect so much! She really has adapted, she has learned to eat with her left hand, and buckle her car seat left handed, and even get herself dressed for the most part on her own. Kids are amazingly resilient and she has proven that to be true! We go into the doctor again tomorrow and then right after that appointment we have one with a physical therapist - we'll see out it goes and keep everyone posted!


Here is Audrey sporting the double owie look! We met the most awesome lady, Myleen at Wound Care, she was so fabulous to Audrey and we saw her often as she changed Audrey's bandages. There is such a high risk of infection with burns that we weren't to change her bandages at home. Myleen was so great! Removing and redoing the bandages was really painful especially on her hand as there was no skin there, anyway it was so nice to have someone make the procedure as bearable as possible.


We went to to zoo on the Saturday before the surgery since we knew we would be cooped up for awhile afterward, here is our little lady taking a break with dad!

Here she is after surgery, she was really woozy and yes we had to use the little gray thing on the car ride home, poor thing! They wheeled her out to the car in a wagon which on any other day would have been fun, but there was nothing fun about this day! She was really out of it and I felt so helpless as how to make things better for her, not a fun feeling for a mom. I am so thankful for good medical care and hopefully a beautiful little hand that will have complete mobility and function! We have a long road ahead of us, but we are slowly but surely going to get there!