The Accident

I have eluded to the accident that Piper had on November 30th but I have yet to get to writing it down. I did actually start posting but Daniel had me stop putting up all the graphic pictures because we are in talks with the property insurance of the apartment complex where it happened over Piper's medical bills. Daniel doesn't want me to post anything to graphic just yet.

Emily came to find an apartment during the end of November. I was taking her around to see apartments and they often have leasing centers/club houses. We were waiting in this one and they had a kitchen with some candy, coffee, and a popcorn machine. Emily was filling out their guest card and I was holding Piper on my hip and scooping up some popcorn on a napkin. Piper started to squirm so I put her down. She walked around the couches and end tables scouting things out and then she started walking toward the gas fireplace. I saw her heading in that direction but I honestly didn't think it would be scalding hot. We have a gas fireplace at our house and it is on constantly. She plays near it and climbs up on the hearth etc... But ours has a mesh screen flush with the glass, like a window screen. You can't see it unless you are up close. This screen acts as a barrier so you can not touch the hot glass. At the apartment complex, the gas fireplace was on the floor with no hearth. I just assumed that it had a screen or tempered glass because how could you have a scalding hot piece of glass exposed on floor level in a public place? Anyway, I was about 10 feet away at the most, I said to her "Piper that might be hot" (thinking very warm, uncomfortable, NOT SCALDING) She approached the fireplace glass and put 2 fingers on it, realized it was hot, stepped back quickly and stumbled causing her to lean forward with both palms flat against the scalding glass. At this point I came running but the awful part was that she couldn't back herself off the glass. So for the 3 to 4 seconds that it took for me to grab her, her hands were pushed against the glass by her body weight. By the time I got to her everywhere on her hands (the whole palms and all the pads of her fingers) that had been against the glass was pure white.

We rushed her to the sink and put her hands in running water. I had Emily call Daniel at work and ask him what I should do. He said to wrap her hands in wet towels and get her to the ER. We did so and they gave her some heavy pain meds, tried to get her to soak them in water to no avail, lathered silvadene cream on them and bandaged them up. She had second degree burns all over her hands. She was really miserable for 2 weeks everytime we changed her bandages. The first night she had blisters 1 inch think on her palms and her little petite hands were fat as sausages. The next day the blisters had totally drained leaving saggy wrinkled skin. 2 days later we saw a wound care specialist and he cut off all the dead skin. This was the hardest on me. Poor Baby. I have pictures of each of these events but they are quite graphic and I will post them at a later date.

By the second or 3rd day she seemed to be fine when her hands were heavily wrapped. She could still play, help her daddy put up the Christmas tree;

and even hug her baby!!

I felt awful for poor little Piper and awful for Emily because she only had two days to look for apartments and here we were spending half a day in the ER. I just wanted to push rewind and not let her down or stay in the car or anything different that would have prevented what happened! Here's an interesting thing - The next day I drove Emily around and stayed in the car while Piper slept and the other kids watched movies (Dan had to work on Saturday of course). Emily told me there was a gas fireplace in one of the other leasing centers with exposed glass and she touched it and it WAS NOT hot. The glass had some black flecks in it - must be special heat tempered glass.

Poor Piper had 6 doctor visits in 3 weeks time. The first 4 visits were in the first week. She was also seeing her pediatrician because she had a fever for 5 days and we didn't know if it was from a virus or if the burns were infected (the biggest risk for burn victims). She even had to go to the lab and get blood taken. See her little band-aid? The Pediatrician gave her some augmentin to help what he thought was a sinus infection (since she had a yucky nose and fever). By the 3rd dose the augmentin caused her to break out in hives all over her body. We quit giving it to her after the 5th dose. The next day she had a horrible diaper rash caused again by the augmentin. Daniel said it was probably a yeast infection because the augmentin had killed all the bacteria in her system. It was true - her poop didn't smell for 2 days. I had never experienced that. I didn't even know her diaper was dirty til I'd go to change her for another reason and then I got a total surprise. I know this seems gross, but I could put my nose an inch away and not smell a thing. Amazing what bacteria can do.

So this poor little baby has been through alot!! After the 2nd visit with the wound specialist we only had to wrap her palms and not all her fingers as well. And yesterday we saw him again and she's still red and tender but we've stopped wrapping all together and he said we don't need to come back unless we notice something unusual.

Yeah!! She'll be able to unwrap her Christmas gifts. At first our Christmas tree was safe this year (which I had been totally worrying about) because she could only bat at the ornaments because she had no use of her fingers. But now she is constantly pulling off ornaments and carrying them around the house. The top of our tree is a bit ornament heavy and the bottom is pretty sparse now.

Thanks to all of you who kept her in your thoughts and prayers. I'll post the burn pics later after things get ironed out. We did tell the complex that we would like to see them put up some sort of barrier in front of that glass so it doesn't happen to anyone else. Even something like those heavy cast iron tri-fold screens. Were were told about a week ago that they have put up some sort of barrier.