(no subject)
Okay, I suppose it's time that I post.
A lot has been going on lately, but most of my friends have been kept informed by people other than myself. Primarily my sister Adah, who posted regular updates during recent times of trouble, and my mother, who sent update e-mails to family and friends. This is for the rest of you.
My sweet little sister, and Adah's twin, Sarah Grace Henville, passed away on August 1st after an extended stay in the burn unit at Bowman Gray Baptist Hospital in Winston Salem. She was eighteen years old.
The injury which led to her hospitalization, and ultimately her death, was a scald which occurred in the bathtub, after a respite worker left her unsupervised. She was burned initially on about 22% of her body, but during the early stages of her hospitalization the burn spread to approxiamtely 30% coverage.
Early on, she seemed to be in lively condition. She vigorously attempted to leave her hospital bed, saying she would like to go to the mall, and had to be restrained. For those of you who do not know, she was Autistic.
Shortly after that, she began experiencing pulmonary complications. Burn patients often experience a buildup of fluids in the lungs, and in addition to this, she was suffering from reflux and began aspirating stomach fluids into the lungs, causing serious damage. She had to be placed on a repirator, on an extremely high setting. She was assessed a mortality rate of 120% that night.
Despite that, she survived the pulmonary distress, defying the expectations of the entire trauma team, some of whom actualy had difficulty believing that the X-rays of her lungs had come from a living patient at all, and her lungs began to recover. She did not, however, become stable enough for them to perform the operations necessary to excise dead tisue, and ward off sepsis and other serious potential complications.
After the pulmonary episode, her kidneys began to fail. This is not uncommon in burn patients, and while kidney failure drastically reduces life expectancy, with the aid of dialysis it does not represent an immedeate threat to the survival of the patient. Remarkably, she did not have to placed in dialysis, as her kidney actually began to recover as well.
After several weeks in the hospital, and a minor surgery (a colostomy, not an operation to excise burn tissue) she remained too unstable to enter the OR for the surgery to excise dead tissue safely. Because of the certainty of death from sepsis if the tissue was not excised, we elected to proceed with a hazardous surgery, and were informed that there was a high probability that she would not survive the operation.
Again, she defied expectations. She survived the operation, lasting several hours in a prone position, which made breathing even more difficult (it was necessary to roll a burn unit respirator to the OR, because the OR respirators were not powerful enough) and during which time she was tranfused three times the volume of the blood in her entire body. The doctors managed to remove the majority of the dead tissue, and placed woundvacs on the area, special devices designed to apply constant, gentle suction, encouraging healing and helping to prevent infection.
Unfortunately, there were more complications. While her lungs continued to imporve (although, I should note, were very far from healthy, and she never got off the respirator), her kidneys began shutting down for the second time. Additionally, her heart began experiencing more diffculties than it previously had, which is significant, because she had already experienced sustained high heartrate and low blood pressure. Her gut, too, began to fail, and she slowed down, or stopped, digesting the food which they were pumping into her stomach through a tube in her nose. Her liver also began failing. Liver failure is untreatable, and fatal. She also had a virulent infection raging in her blood.
We were told that no patient had ever survived five system organ failure, and ofcourse Sarah had an infection in addition to the organ failures, as well and more dead burn tissue, and extensive open wounds through which she was continuously losing fluids.
She passed away shortly after four, after we had been asked to leave the room so that they could change her bedding and wound dressings. We had returned to the Ronald McDonald House, where we had been staying for nearly the entire time she was hospitalized (just under a month), to eat and to rest a bit, and were notified by phone.
Sarah was not left alone during her hospitalization. We maintained a nearly constant presence in the room. My mother and sister sang to her nearly every day, and I even joined in once in a while, although I'm not a very good singer. Whenever we were in the room, we held her hands. We sort of took shifts sometimes when we were in her room, one or two of us sitting down while others stood at her bedside and held her hand, because it was very difficult to stand in one place so long. While it was a taxing experience, we remained optimistic until the very end, and even though Sarah Grace was not responsive enough to clearly acknowledge our presence, it is comforting to believe that we were noticed, and that perhaps our presence helped her to defy the odds as long as she did.
I would like to make a note about Sarah's middle name, Grace: She was given it because she had already beaten the odds just by being born.
My mother, while pregnant with the twins, was informed of her iminent birth defects, and also told that the odds of both the twins and the mother surviving the birth were slim. The doctors recommended a saline abortion of twin B (Sarah Grace). My mother refused. The twins were born at twenty eight weeks, about 2/3 of the full term, extremely premature. But they were born, both of them, and my mother survived. So, my mother said, and says, that Sarah was brought to us by the Grace of God. I hold few religous beliefs, but I believe that if we can be saved, it is by grace alone.
Rest in Peace Sarah Grace, we love you.
Corey.
(I'll be thinking about you.)
A lot has been going on lately, but most of my friends have been kept informed by people other than myself. Primarily my sister Adah, who posted regular updates during recent times of trouble, and my mother, who sent update e-mails to family and friends. This is for the rest of you.
My sweet little sister, and Adah's twin, Sarah Grace Henville, passed away on August 1st after an extended stay in the burn unit at Bowman Gray Baptist Hospital in Winston Salem. She was eighteen years old.
The injury which led to her hospitalization, and ultimately her death, was a scald which occurred in the bathtub, after a respite worker left her unsupervised. She was burned initially on about 22% of her body, but during the early stages of her hospitalization the burn spread to approxiamtely 30% coverage.
Early on, she seemed to be in lively condition. She vigorously attempted to leave her hospital bed, saying she would like to go to the mall, and had to be restrained. For those of you who do not know, she was Autistic.
Shortly after that, she began experiencing pulmonary complications. Burn patients often experience a buildup of fluids in the lungs, and in addition to this, she was suffering from reflux and began aspirating stomach fluids into the lungs, causing serious damage. She had to be placed on a repirator, on an extremely high setting. She was assessed a mortality rate of 120% that night.
Despite that, she survived the pulmonary distress, defying the expectations of the entire trauma team, some of whom actualy had difficulty believing that the X-rays of her lungs had come from a living patient at all, and her lungs began to recover. She did not, however, become stable enough for them to perform the operations necessary to excise dead tisue, and ward off sepsis and other serious potential complications.
After the pulmonary episode, her kidneys began to fail. This is not uncommon in burn patients, and while kidney failure drastically reduces life expectancy, with the aid of dialysis it does not represent an immedeate threat to the survival of the patient. Remarkably, she did not have to placed in dialysis, as her kidney actually began to recover as well.
After several weeks in the hospital, and a minor surgery (a colostomy, not an operation to excise burn tissue) she remained too unstable to enter the OR for the surgery to excise dead tissue safely. Because of the certainty of death from sepsis if the tissue was not excised, we elected to proceed with a hazardous surgery, and were informed that there was a high probability that she would not survive the operation.
Again, she defied expectations. She survived the operation, lasting several hours in a prone position, which made breathing even more difficult (it was necessary to roll a burn unit respirator to the OR, because the OR respirators were not powerful enough) and during which time she was tranfused three times the volume of the blood in her entire body. The doctors managed to remove the majority of the dead tissue, and placed woundvacs on the area, special devices designed to apply constant, gentle suction, encouraging healing and helping to prevent infection.
Unfortunately, there were more complications. While her lungs continued to imporve (although, I should note, were very far from healthy, and she never got off the respirator), her kidneys began shutting down for the second time. Additionally, her heart began experiencing more diffculties than it previously had, which is significant, because she had already experienced sustained high heartrate and low blood pressure. Her gut, too, began to fail, and she slowed down, or stopped, digesting the food which they were pumping into her stomach through a tube in her nose. Her liver also began failing. Liver failure is untreatable, and fatal. She also had a virulent infection raging in her blood.
We were told that no patient had ever survived five system organ failure, and ofcourse Sarah had an infection in addition to the organ failures, as well and more dead burn tissue, and extensive open wounds through which she was continuously losing fluids.
She passed away shortly after four, after we had been asked to leave the room so that they could change her bedding and wound dressings. We had returned to the Ronald McDonald House, where we had been staying for nearly the entire time she was hospitalized (just under a month), to eat and to rest a bit, and were notified by phone.
Sarah was not left alone during her hospitalization. We maintained a nearly constant presence in the room. My mother and sister sang to her nearly every day, and I even joined in once in a while, although I'm not a very good singer. Whenever we were in the room, we held her hands. We sort of took shifts sometimes when we were in her room, one or two of us sitting down while others stood at her bedside and held her hand, because it was very difficult to stand in one place so long. While it was a taxing experience, we remained optimistic until the very end, and even though Sarah Grace was not responsive enough to clearly acknowledge our presence, it is comforting to believe that we were noticed, and that perhaps our presence helped her to defy the odds as long as she did.
I would like to make a note about Sarah's middle name, Grace: She was given it because she had already beaten the odds just by being born.
My mother, while pregnant with the twins, was informed of her iminent birth defects, and also told that the odds of both the twins and the mother surviving the birth were slim. The doctors recommended a saline abortion of twin B (Sarah Grace). My mother refused. The twins were born at twenty eight weeks, about 2/3 of the full term, extremely premature. But they were born, both of them, and my mother survived. So, my mother said, and says, that Sarah was brought to us by the Grace of God. I hold few religous beliefs, but I believe that if we can be saved, it is by grace alone.
Rest in Peace Sarah Grace, we love you.
Corey.
(I'll be thinking about you.)