All Better

All Better, originally uploaded by leslie.ann.

Thomas got the all clear from the doctors at The Shriner's Hospital. All told, his burn took 10 days to heal. So, no scar. We will have to keep his arm covered when he's out in the sun this summer.

The mark turns purplish when his arm is down by his side but when we rub in his moisturizer, it almost completely disappears. Sometimes burn marks get darker before they lighten and disappear but that doesn't seem to be the case with his. I think it will be gone well before a year has passed.

The ordeal is over but I'm still so sad that this happened to him.

Appointments Update

Thomas had his speech and development evaluations on Friday afternoon. (The speech therapist rescheduled so we could do them both at once.) Overall, it went very well. He tested at 9 months on his speech development which is a 50% delay. But we already knew that. I mean, he's supposed to talk and he doesn't. No big surprise there.

I was more worried about the other areas of development: language comprehension, social skills, gross motor skills and fine motor skills. We thought he was doing fine in all of those areas but we're no experts. It would have been awful to have found out he had further delays that we hadn't even noticed. But there was no need to worry because, as it turns out, he's 3 to 6 months ahead in all those areas. They seemed particularly impressed when he showed them where his eyes, nose, ears, mouth, hair and feet are. I thought we were supposed to be teaching him body parts at this age but apparently it's an advanced skill.

He does qualify for free speech therapy once a week. We should start in a few weeks. In the meantime, the speech therapist recommended that we find a way to give him more exposure to other little kids. Toddlers are more likely to mimic other toddlers than adults. That's where he's gotten stuck. He mimics us physically; if I'm wiping off the counters, he'll bend down and wipe the floor. But he doesn't try to mimic the sounds we make. So, we're looking for an affordable (read free) way to get him around other kids.

We also went back to The Shriner's Hospital today. His arm is almost completely healed. There's one very small spot that is still open but it should scab over in the next day or two. Now we just have to manage the burn so it doesn't leave a scar. We're supposed to massage moisturizer into it 4 times a day for 5 minutes at a time. I don't know how I'm going to convince him to sit still for that long. He's also wearing a pressure sleeve to keep the new skin from puffing up and leaving a raised area. He'll have a red mark and be especially susceptible to sunburn for the next year or so. After that, good as new.

Appointments

We are going to be busy with appointments in the next two weeks. Thomas has two evaluations scheduled. He's being seen by an infant development specialist on Friday afternoon and a speech pathologist 10 days later on March 23rd. They each come to our house for the evaluation. I really have no idea what to expect; I'm just glad that we're finally doing something. Although if the future is anything like the past, it will be another 5 months before we get a report or find out if he qualifies for free services.

We're also going back to The Shriner's Hospital on Monday afternoon (the 16th). At our first appointment, they said his burn should heal within two weeks. It's only been two days but I haven't seen any improvement at all. I'm starting to worry that he won't heal fast enough and he'll end up with a scar. On the other hand, Jeremy thinks it is getting better. His arm does bleed a lot when we clean it and blood is a sign of healing.

So much for avoiding the heartbreaking parts.

Coming Soon

We're starting a blog to help keep everyone up to date on the cutest boy ever.

Unfortunately, we're all burn, all the time right now. We're going to wait a few more days to start updating so it won't be so, well, heartbreaking.