"I want this boo boo to go away"

“Me too baby, me too” I thought as my eyes filled with tears. He was exhausted from crying and fought me as I continued to awkwardly hold him to keep his burned arm under the water in the sink of our hotel bathroom.

It all happened so fast. Yesterday morning at around 7 am we were at a beautiful hotel on the Chesapeake Bay, a place my agency holds a conference every year. This year we decided to make it a “workcation” and Su and the boys came along.

I remember putting the single cup coffee cup into the little machine and letting him stand on our cooler to watch it drip. What was I thinking? That those hotel coffee pots always made tepid coffee so it couldn’t be hot? That at the age of two he would actually listen to me when I told him not to touch anything?

I was turned away from him putting something into a bag. Su was nursing Benji across the room.

His scream was blood curdling. I remember racing to him and pulling is long sleeved shirt off of him. That’s when we realized that the skin on his forearm was coming off too.

Ambulance, ER, Tylenol with codeine, changing the bandage several times, debriding the wound more.

The burn is the most painful kind—a second degree (in his case over most of the top of his forearm below the elbow to the wrist.) Thankfully the joints were spared.  I remember thinking in the ER that I wished he did not suck his thumb. All he wanted to do was to suck his left thumb for relief but as it was the arm that was burned, it was hard to do so without a great deal of pain.

With first degree the skin is not broken and yes it hurts but it gets better with topical remedies. Third degrees are by far the most serious but they actually burn so badly that the nerve endings are destroyed and the permanent damage is horrific. Our hope is that by cooling it under running water for the 20 minutes until the EMTs arrived we avoided that. So he has the second degree. Open, susceptible to infection, in a word—painful. Our job is to keep it clean and prevent infection.

We are on our way in a few minutes to see our pediatrician for follow up. Danny has been a trooper. The pain medication helps I’m sure, but for the most part he’s his usual self except when we have to change the dressing and wash the area before applying a special antibiotic crème, he cries and cries. I would too.
   
We are pretty shaken up too. It all happened in an instant. Hug your babies extra close today friends. We sure are.