10th Day after Release from the Hosp

Missy has been continuing down the path to recovery. All the areas on her hands and forearms are healing as expected. She has a couple slight problem areas where she broke open the skin in her sleep by scratching thru the dressings. She says that the itching is unbelievable. Since she has been itching in her sleep those two areas are now quite painful so she has gone back on pain meds as needed. She had been doing real good without them her first week out of the hospital. The itching is due to the nerve endings regenerating, which is all a good thing- but none the less quite bothersome! Most of the burned areas are now a whitish purple color, except for the broken tissue area which (according to Missy) looks like ground meat! We went to the burn clinic today for her second visit. As I mentioned, the Dr. said that it is all healing the way burns do and that now we can stop putting on the Bacitracin ointment and only use Hydraphor on the purple areas and then Hydraphor and the Xeroform sheets on the broken skin area. On top of that she has now been fitted for interim pressure gloves and sleeves. These are quite tight, so you can imagine quite painful to put on. They have to be worn inside out so that the seams don't irritate the burned areas. Missy was in tears during the whole process of putting them on. Once on though, she says that it feels pretty good. Boy, I'm going to have fun tomorrow doing the change! Her left hand has a full glove and then a sleeve over that. On Sunday, we will remove the four fingers from the glove and only have her thumb on the left hand covered. The right hand has a sleeve on, with a hole cut out for her thumb to go through.

Missy did ask the Dr. if he would release her to go back to work on Monday, 1/19 and he said fine, if she thought that she could do her job. She is very excited to get his release. It's a major step in getting back to some normalcy. She has her next app't back at the Burn Clinic in two weeks. Hopefully, the new meds that he gave her for the itching will help her keep her hands off the burn areas while she sleeps.

Took some pics of some of Missy's "get well" cards and two lovely bouquets of flowers that Missy received!