Thursday, August 20

Today was a rather good day for Danny. The way that my schedule has worked out, I have always been there at some of the worst times. I usually get there around wound care time and which means that he is getting drugged up and ready for his daily beating. Then he is in bad pain and hallucinating from painkillers and in a bad way.

That was the case yesterday. I got there just before they changed his bandages. He told me that he was really worried about it because of how bad it had hurt the day before. I went to run some erands while they changed the bandages. When i came back he was complaining about how bad it hurt. On most days he rates his pain at about a 4 or 5 out of 10. Now he said it was between a 9 and 10, 10 being absolutly unbearable. He was hitting the button to call the nurse and passing out from the pain. He was getting so desperate that he almost sat up and crawled out of bed. This went on for a long time and it seemed like it wasn't getting any better. Leaving out most of the details, it was pretty awful to see him in such a bad way.

From yesterday to today was a night and day difference. I came in first thing in the morning after i got off of work to find him sleeping soundly. I sat there for an hour and all he did was move his arms around a couple of times. He said a couple of crazy things to me right as I was getting up to leave, but I think it was the painkillers talking. Shift change came around so I decided to go home and get some sleep. I came back about 4 hours later and he was feeling much better about his situation. Wound care had gone much better today and they shaved him for the first time in a couple of days. Something had been done to ease his pain back to something a little more bearable and he was not goofy from the drugs. He was talking about how desperate he had been over the previous two days. It had been his worst two days by far.

Hopefully he has hit a turning point. There is a lot of good news with him though. The grafts on his arms are healing very well. His face is looking good too. As most people have not seen him for a week or so, you will not believe the difference. He looks like himself again. His fever is down and he is ahead of schedule as far as healing progress goes. The morning of his last grafting surgery, he was up and walking. He walked all the way around the nursing station. One of the long time nurses said "For someone burned as bad as he was to be up and walking that much is unheard of". He is doing stuff at the two weeks mark that normally takes people until the four week mark. The physical therapist is calling him superman because of how fast he is improving. She also said that she has not seen someone come in in such bad shape and progress so quickly.So even though he is having bad days, he is still way ahead of the curve for recovery.

He is still to tired to eat more than a few bites of food at a time and his feeding tube is still a bane to his existence, but he is still hopeful for a speedy recovery. His own positive attitude is a hugely important factor in his recovery. I expect in the next couple of days to see a big improvement as his surgeries and skin donor sites heal a little more.

Andy