Surgery X Friday, April 17th

Hello to all. This is Chance. Carson, Cody and I left Olney at 10:00 this morning to see Clay before he went into surgery. It has been two weeks since his brothers have seen him. When we walked in and told him Carson and Cody were here to see him he tried several times to sit up and I am sure he would have jumped out of bed had he been able. Cody read him a story. Carson told him about the new puppy he was going to get when he gets home. The visit went by much to quickly. They called for him in the O.R. and he was prepped and on his way down a little before 3:00 this afternoon. We had been prepared for a long procedure because we thought they were going to have both Purdue and Arnoldo in the surgery working on different areas. About 45 minutes into the procedure Dr. Purdue saw me in the hall and reassured me that everything was going well, but they had decided to concentrate on the face and postpone the hand for a later date. It appears Clay will get to keep all of his fingers a little longer. We were prepared for them to take a portion from several digits today. They rolled Clay up from the operating room about 6:15 this evening. Dr. Arnoldo told us that everything went as planned. He was worried about the skin color of the grafts. We as parents are most worried about function and getting him home. Today was a big step forward and the Doctors are making progress with each procedure. He still has the left hand and the back of his head, to be grafted, and we are not sure of the time line on either of these. We would like to thank both Doctor Arnoldo and Doctor Purdue for their expertise in helping Clay. Deidra and I both feel it would take a special calling to be a burn surgeon and we are glad they chose to do it. Thanks to everyone who prayed for Clay today, we hope today will be a jump start on his road to recovery.