Subject: Electrical burn update
From: David Rush <kumo@bellsouth.net>
Date: 28 Apr 2002 11:54:25 +0100
Message-ID: <okfg01g14bi.fsf@bellsouth.net>
User-Agent: Gnus/5.0808 (Gnus v5.8.8) XEmacs/21.1 (Channel Islands)

Hi y'all

I (David) am out of the hospital now, which is entirely good news. Now
comes the long slow process by which the healing will be completed.
They release you from the burns unit when you are no longer at risk of
infection, since it takes 12-18 months for the skin grafts to fully
heal.

On top of that I have a few issues resulting from the fact that I had
an electrical burn that haven't had any treatment yet - in fact the
treatment of the side-effects of electrical trauma is a fairly recent
area of research. There is cellular-level disruption in muscle and
nerve tissue. At this stage I find that my injured leg is only good
for about two hours, then I have to sit or lie down for a fair bit. I
also all manner of strange sensations travelling from my hand down to
my leg. There are some motion problems in my hand which I'm hoping to
get sorted (or at least make progress on)  when I visit the physical
therapist May 7.

Emotionally I've been at my worst since the night of the
accident. Getting my mind settled down for the long-haul of physical
therapy rounds and lasting electrical side-effects is daunting to say
the least. While I was in the hospital I had a sense that once you
left the burn unit you were done. I was clearly fooling myself, the
hospital time was just the beginning. Patricia is having a similiar
reaction, since even though I'm home now, I'm simply not very able to
help out around this house at the moment.

Anyway, thanks to everyone for praying. God has been hugely gracious to
me. According to statistics from the University of Chicago Electrical
Trauma Center over 75% of high-voltage burns (>10,000 volts) end with
amputations. I assume that this number doesn't consider the number of
deaths, so I've been outrageously lucky so far. The rest of the
process will be far more time-consuming and uncertain for the doctors
than dealing with the overt skin and muscular damage, but they also
don't have the habit of counting on the God factor. Your prayers have
helped us through quite a lot to this point. Thank you all.

david rush
-- 

Life's but a walking shadow; a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing. -- Macbeth Act 5, scene 5