Today makes 2 months in the hospital.

Paul had his arm unattached from his side last Thursday and the doctors were happy that he was healing up better than they expected. Unfortunately while he went into the hospital with one injury, he will be leaving with two and a whole lot of scarring. His side is in pretty bad shape from all the infections (there ended up being more than 2, a bunch of smaller ones kept invading him) and he still has staples and stitches that will have to come out. As of right now he still has two drains coming out of his side that they are hoping to take out at some time today. His arm looks like it swallowed a tennis ball because it sticks out in a rounded shape where the new section is. So rather than sinking in like it did before it sticks out and is still stitched all around it.

I honestly don't think either one of them look bad but Paul has times where he gets pissed that he's going to be disfigured for the rest of his life (his words, not mine). I know he's going through a lot of different emotions about this and that it's normal and all but it's hard to watch someone you love dealing with this stuff and not being able to fix things. He's ready to get out of the hospital and go home and get back to driving a car and doing his every day normal things and I think he's going to be a bit surprised at how tough some things are going to be for him. He insists on not going back to the hotel when we have a perfectly good house to move into but the WTU may have other plans and want to keep him close by. That should be an interesting battle.

I did finally meet up with one of the other spouses here from the unit. Her husband is in pretty bad shape with 52% of his body being burned and losing part of his arm. Yet he's doing really well from the sounds of it and still doing his best to joke around with his wife through all the tubes in his throat. I can tell just by talking to his wife that they'll be alright and will get though this. She was telling me of another spouse who saw her badly burned husband and decided that she couldn't handle it because he didn't look like the man she married so she left her ring by his bed and left their kids with his parents. A month or so later the guy had died. I can't imagine what goes through some of these guys minds to not have their families by their side every step of the way. I know a lot of them have to be worried that their wives are going to reject them because of the way they look now. That's one of the reasons I keep telling Paul that his arm and side aren't that big of a deal. It's not to minimize it or anything like that but I just want to remind him that we can deal with this and that things will be okay.

Hopefully the next update I post will be to say that he's gotten out of the hospital. That was supposed to happen today but we still haven't heard yet what's going on.