Getting Burned

Recently Paul lit up the woodstove for the first time since last year.  Previously, we'd always had a fence around it, but the twins are older now and we hadn't put it up.  Paul told the boys it would be hot, and then fired it up.  Not ten minutes later, Reid was walking by on his way to the table, and put his hand out to touch the stove.  He got burned.  And it looked bad.

I felt terrible as I ran his hand under the cold water, and he screamed and sobbed, huge tears swiftly tumbling down his cheeks.  Paul and I snapped at one another in our worry over what to do.  I ended up spraying it with Dermablast, applying triple antibiotic ointment, and bandaging it before calling the doctor for an appointment.  Luckily, they had appointments available that Saturday morning.  I held a shaky Reid on the couch while we watched Caillou and bided our time until the appointment.

At the doctor's office, the nurses applauded our treatment of the burn.  They applied some special burn cream (which would alleviate pain and prevent infection) before rebandaging it.  We were prescribed some of the special cream, and told to keep the burn bandaged for a week.  The key thing at this point was to prevent infection. 

Do you think a 3 year old likes to keep a bandage on for a week?  Not so much.  So I drew a cat on Reid's bandage every single day (his request) so that he would leave it on.

Below is a picture of the burn.  If you don't like graphic pictures, you might not want to scroll down any further.  You can see why I was so horrified after it first happened - you know how painful it must have been! 

Around the 4th day, the blister finally popped, and then Reid's hand was able to start draining.  Of course, once it popped it was more painful to him.  But thankfully he seems to be healing up well.  And while I seem to still be filled with Mom-guilt over the incident, slowly as he heals I am recovering too.  These accidents just seem to happen sometimes, regardless of how hard we try to protect our children.  I'm not the only one who felt horrible over what happened.  Pierce came home from school with this picture in his folder:

It's a picture of Reid by the woodstove, with a bandage on his hand.  On the back it says,
Reid hert his hand and has a blistr.  It hrtes rily bad. I got my frst day (aka first aid) kit.  Mom got her frst day kit.  Mom put a banddage on him.  His blistr is big.  Mom put medesin on it.

And every day Cort and Pierce both say, "Reid, is your owie hand feeling better?"  Nice to see some brotherly concern, in the midst of the daily squabbles.  I sure hope that's the last burn incident that we have in this family!