Accident Prone Makay

We have been in San Diego with my parents for almost a month now. Ryan left for Officer Training Camp on Sunday. He called me after his first day there and was proud to report that he hadn't cried yet. I am working on registering our kids for school which will start in two weeks. We have gone to the beach a couple of times, the pool and last weekend before Ryan left we went camping.

The camping turned out to not be so good. With five kids running around wild, out in the wild, an accident is bound to happen. And who would that accident fall upon? Our accident prone child of course, Makay.

It's the saddest thing ever. It was about 11:30 in the morning and the kids were playing with ropes. While no one was looking Makay lost her balance (we don't know if she tripped or what) and fell into the fire pit. There was no fire going but we had one that morning so there was lots of hot embers there. She landed on her right elbow and hand.

My mom was the closest so she grabbed her and pulled her out, Ryan and I were running over by this time. My mom tried to brush the hot ashes off and her skin started to come off to. Ryan grabbed the ten gallon water jug and took of the top so we could put her arm in it. Between Makay and my's screaming we had drawn some attention of the other campers around us. They were great to run and try to find a ranger. There was a nurse in the next camp site to he came over and tried to clean her up as best he could.

Ryan and I drove her to the ranger station and they gave us directions to an emergency care place about twenty minutes away. We drove back to our camp and decided that my mom would drive Makay and I and Ryan would stay with the other kids. We got to the emergency care place and they said they needed to send us to a special burn unit. Poor Makay was so good about waiting, and it's good because that's all we did for most of the day!

We drove to downtown San Diego, another 30 minutes, to UCSD Hospitals burn unit. We finally got in there at about 2:30 and they took a good look at her burns. First they gave her some good drugs, poor kid deserved them, and then cleaned her arm. The nurse took a cloth with warm soapy water and just started to scrub, it was horrible to watch. All the dead skin came off and then they cut off all the blisters that had formed. We found out that most of the burn is a second degree burn with is good because it will be able to heal by itself. But there is a small area on the under side of her arm near her elbow that stayed white, a third degree burn. We still don't know weather she will need surgery for that part. The skin is burned so deeply that the cells can't regenerate themselves.

They taught me how to clean and dress her arm so I have been doing that the last couple of days. We go back on Thursday again to see how it's healing. Things are looking good so far but the doctor is still worried about the third degree burn area. She is the toughest kid ever. The doctor and nurse couldn't believe how brave she was being on Monday when we went in for a check up. She hadn't had any pain medicine before hand and the nurse really had to scrub but she didn't make a peep.

It's so hard to see your child in pain! I want so badly to be able to take it away from her, she's so young and Innocent to be going through so much pain. It just proves how vibrant her spirit is though that she can still act like a normal kid and not complain about the inconvenience of eating with her left hand or not being able to go to the bathroom herself. We will keep everyone updated when we learn more and I think I may have some pictures to share. It sounds morbid but I thought she would want to see her arm when she grows up and has a big scar on her arm that she doesn't remember getting (cross your fingers!).