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"I'm pretty thankful." - Brandon
Carnahan's Story
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St. John's opens newly expanded burn center
The new
10,000-square-foot unit replaces a 5,000 square-foot facility in use
since 1981. The Burn Center opened that year, following the donation
of Robert and Betty Killian, who established a fund in memory of
their son Roger, who died as a result of injuries sustained in an explosion on Feb.
28, 1981.
Today, more than 275 inpatients are treated and more than 4,000
outpatients visits take place each year at the Burn Center, which
cares for patients in all of southwest Missouri and has patients referred from parts of Oklahoma, Kansas and Arkansas.
"With new
technology and population growth, we needed to update and enlarge
our facility," said Jon Swope, president of St. John's Hospital.
"In the new burn center, you will see the latest technology and
equipment to care for burn patients. The new inpatient center will
include four state-of-the-art intensive care beds, as well as five
private acute-care beds. The new outpatient facility will include
five exam rooms and a hydro therapy room."
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Brandon
Carnahan of Lebanon is a typical Ozarks 20-year-old – when he was a
patient in St. John’s Hospital’s Burn Center in February, all he could
think about was the fact that he had to miss a hunting trip to Texas with
his stepdad because of his injuries.
Carnahan, who works for Knight Construction in Lebanon as a concrete
pourer and lives with parents Christy and Chuck Knight, 13-year-old sister
Lauren and twin 8-month-old siblings Charlie and Lizzie, received
second-degree burns on his face, chest and left hand, and third-degree
burns on his right hand when a gas can he was holding ignited as he used
the gas to start a fire in a wood furnace.
“My girlfriend Jessi and I buy cars at auction, then fix them up, detail
them and resell them. I was in the shop on her parents’ property, getting
ready to clean some cars, and it was a cold day, so I got a fire going in
the furnace like I had many times before,” Carnahan explains. “I poured a
little gas to build up the fire, and that’s when the gas can exploded and
the flames hit me in the face and chest and knocked me back about eight to
10 feet.”
Carnahan was wearing a heavy Carhartt jacket and a long-sleeved shirt,
which offered him some protection from the flames. He stripped off the
jacket and shirt and patted out the flames with his left hand, and got
outside. He used his cell phone to call 911 and St. John’s EMS arrived.
“I wasn’t feeling very much pain yet because my adrenaline was pumping so
hard. I was running around in circles outside to keep the burns cool when
the ambulance arrived. They made me stop running around, but they had
their heat on in the ambulance. I wouldn’t get in until they shut it off
and it cooled off in there.”
Outside, EMS staff treated Carnahan with pain medication and dressed his
burns. St. John’s Life Line arrived on the scene shortly thereafter to
transport him via helicopter to St. John’s Hospital’s Burn Center in
Springfield.
The Burn Center at St. John's Hospital is the only burn center in
southwest Missouri. As a Level 1 trauma center, St. John’s trauma and burn
physicians provide in-hospital 24-hour coverage and lead the burn team in
caring for pediatric and adult burn patients.
St. John’s burn team includes six burn/trauma surgeons, physician assistants,
17 highly trained registered nurses, 13 burn technicicans, physical and occupational therapists, nutrition support,
neurophysiologists, respiratory staff, child life specialists, social
services and pastoral care services. Additional
specialty staff work diligently with the Burn Team to take care of
patients who have all types of burns (thermal, chemical, scalds,
electrocutions), traumatic or complex wounds, or other serious of life
threatening skin diseases. In
addition to treating patients, St.
John’Burn
Center also offers a variety of burn and fire related educational programs. These
educational programs include classroom education on fire safety for school
children, fire safety and first aid courses, professional lectures (first
responder needs and physician continuing medical education)
and participation in various health and safety fairs.
“I was surprised at how many people were part of the team to take care of
me,” Carnahan says.
Carnahan spent the next six days as a patient in St. John’s Burn Center.
Trauma surgeon Roger Huckfeldt, M.D., (pictured left) performed skin-graft
surgery on Carnahan’s right hand, which is expected to be as good as new
in about a year, he says. He continues to wear a protective glove and
bandages to cover the grafts and visits the Burn Center’s outpatient
clinic to have it changed every three months.
The burns on his face were treated with Aquacel dressings, a special
wound-care dressing that kills infection-causing bacteria and requires few
changes.
His right hand and chest, which were more severely burned, were treated
with BioBrane dressings. BioBrane is a nylon material that contains a
gelatin that interacts with clotting factors in the wound. That
interaction causes the dressing to adhere better, forming a more durable
protective layer.
Unlike traditional bandages, both Aquacel and BioBrane promote wound
healing by interacting directly with body tissues.
“Burn dressings have advanced by leaps and bounds over the last 10 years,”
says Rich Raymond, BSN, Burn Center assistant nursing director. “These new
‘interactive’ dressings decrease burn patients’ pain, the severity of
their injury and the need to change dressings. Since these new dressings
became available, we can send burn patients home from the hospital sooner,
and some patients can be treated on an outpatient basis entirely.”
As he recovered from his burns, Carnahan had to make sure to drink plenty
of fluids and eat a high-protein diet.
“I put peanut butter on everything for quite awhile,” he says.
Carnahan had occupational therapy twice a day while in the hospital. This
assisted with the range-of-motion exercises for his hand and face.
Hydrotherapy, or whirlpool treatments, were used to assist with
debridement, and for helping keep the skin on his hand and around his
mouth pliable.
“I had to flex my hand a lot and put a bundle of tongue depressers in my
mouth to make sure my skin in those areas wouldn’t heal too tightly. What
I was most concerned about was not having the range of motion in my hand
to be able to work or hunt or fish,” Carnahan says.
He needn’t have worried, however, because he and his stepdad made their
Texas hunting trip just a couple of weeks later than originally planned.
“I had to miss four weeks of work, but I felt good two or three weeks
after I was injured, so we decided to go ahead and make the trip. I could
do just about everything I ever did before I was burned,” he says.
Carnahan realizes he is lucky his injuries weren’t more severe and his
scarring has been minimal.
“I’m pretty thankful. I go to church more often now and spend more time
with my family. I’m also a lot more careful around fire now. We got a new
shop in town for our car business. It doesn’t have a wood furnace,” he
says with a grin.
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