Update on Little William

One of our wonderful adoptive mothers is a nurse. She is taking time off and leaving her family for 10 days to go and care for William. She will teach those at Luckyhill how to properly care for his feet.

She sent the following email regarding the supplies she will need to gather to take with her. She is leaving in two weeks, so if you can, please find time to help this week. If you would like to contribute money to help buy supplies, please send a check made out to Luckyhill to :

LUCKYHILL
C/O LOIS MARTINO
3220 East Horse Thief Dr.
Heber City, UT
84032.

If you would rather send supplies, please read the information Becky provided and leave me a comment with your email address ad what you are going to send. I'll send you her address so you can ship supplies directly to her.

Thank you all so much! With all our efforts, we can save this poor boy, and hopefully he will not lose the ability to walk!

Here's the email from our Nurse-Mom:

I think everyone should just send money to Lucky Hill. Then, I'll have Lois or Jessica purchase the supplies with my address as the 'ship to' address. We'll purchase them in about a week to be ready to go.

I just feel like if people think they're donating to an individual, rather than a foundation, they'll be a little wary. And, if extra donations come in, beyond the $$$ we actually need now, Lois can save it for when I go back again to buy round two of supplies.

I did send the links for the two kinds of bandages we need to Lois. I'll post them here too. They're very common. You could even find them at your local pharmacy, so if people wanted to donate actual bandages, please ship them to me.

This would be the bandage that I would wrap his feet in. He'll probably use almost a roll for each foot...daily. So, I'll need almost a case of them to get them through the next six weeks. Then, I'll take another case with me when I go back, if he needs them. I'm hoping that after 6 weeks, he'll be to the point that we can use less and just wrap them a little more loosely so he can go and play. I'm not picky about the size, I just picked a larger size so that it would mean less wrapping. Wider is better. It HAS to be non-stretch though. It can't use an ace bandage, the pressure will affect the fragile healing skin. I also need to be able to just throw it away. I'll just go with whatever I've got.

This is what I'll be actually putting on the burns after I put on the antibiotic ointment, before I wrap them. I know eventually we'll need a full case of them, but we should just see how many individual boxes we can get donated right now. At $11.95/box, that would be any easy thing to donate.

I have three tubes of antibiotic ointment donated right now (with the promise of three more). I also had someone donate 6 boxes of gloves already last night, so I think we're set. I'm just going to use gentle dial soap to clean the burns. There is Silver Sulfadine cream that someone mentioned, but I'm going to stick to over the counter supplies right now. If he has an allergy, I just don't want anything to happen. I would feel terrible, if I actually made things worse.

I'm going to REALLY try to get him a Tetanus shot, or to find out if he has had one. I hope so. I'll ask about antibiotics too when we get to the clinic, and pain medication, because I absolutely can't take those with me. I have some open toed plastic slippers with rubber soles for William to wear. I have NO idea how weak he is (he looks very weak), but I would love to see him able to at least stand on his feet by the time I leave. If he has slippers, we'll be able to gently slide them onto his feet over the large bandages to get him up in a standing position.

I would like to cover the bandages with some large tube socks before we do that. And, after he heals his skin will be SO sensitive to the sun (if it gets to much sun exposure, it will be very damaged). He needs socks. I'm sure this will be weird for him, but for a while, we'll need to adapt. So, we need large tube socks. They'll keep the dust off the bandages too.

I know everyone is doing a really great job at Lucky Hill, but we need the bandages to look a lot cleaner than they do in the pics. Hopefully, just changing them everyday will fix that.

We'll also need nutrition donated. I'm looking for some sort of powder that is tasty that will add a TON of calories to the water he needs to drink. He needs complex carbs AND more fluids. I'm sure they're doing the best they can, but if he had someone sitting with him all day to remind him to drink, he would hopefully look a little more perky. And, that will really help the healing process. His body is using all the calories its taking in right now to try to heal the wounds, that's why he looks so thin. He's being fed, it's just not enough. He probably doesn't "feel" like eating either. Even burn patients in the U.S. have to double their calorie intake to promote healing.

There are a couple of praise God's here:
1. I'm so glad these burns aren't on the bottom of his feet. We actually have a possibility of getting him up to shuffle a little so that his body remembers how to walk.

2. The burns don't look infected to me yet. It's hard to tell because of the purple, but they actually look ok for now.

3. They're not over a major joint, like a knee, where we would have to worry about the skin scarring down. There is a little spot on his ankles, but they're more to the side. It really is a better situation than I imagined!

Please continue to pray, pray, pray that we can hold off infection. That is what I'm most concerned about. Also, and this is MUCH less of a priority than bandages (so maybe us Lucky Hill folks can work on it), I would like to bring him something to do while he lays in bed. Coloring books, crayons, books that I can read to him, workbooks with puzzles that we can do. He's just lying there, that would never happen here.

As a RN on a peds floor, I used to spend ALL my spare time playing with the kids. Here, he would have a boatload of toys, movies, food, books, all for him to have any time he asked. I'm worried about his little spirit too. He's probably SO depressed. If I can give him a few little things to make him feel special, and put the spark back in his eyes, that will help him heal too.

He deserves some treats (not food), but some things to really cheer him up when he starts to feel "down", which is common for kids. They feel sad one minute, they cry, and then if you redirect them they feel alright again. I just want to have things to make him feel better. If he feels like he has a few bright spots (like new toys) with this whole ordeal, he might feel a little less blue overall. I don't have a 9-year-old, so anything anyone isn't using would be great!

Again, I obviously, need the bandages MUCH more, but if you have things that you're kids aren't using, I'll take those too. No stuffed animals please. Thanks so much! I'm awed and humbled by the mountains God is moving to help heal this little guy.