Burn patient's mother: "Scariest thing I've ever had to go through"

By Courtney Crown, Riley Children's Health videographer, cfinafrock@iuhealth.org

Initially, July 11 was like many other days in Axton Pugh's life; he was watching his dad burn some brush after his dad returned home from working at his tree service business. But July 11 would end differently than any other day prior.

It had just been the Fourth of July," Blakely Pugh, Axton's mom, explained. "So, when [his dad] was cleaning the brush, we don't know if maybe mortar from somebody's yard or something got mixed in with the brush, and while the brush was burning, something in the fire blew up."

Seven-year-old Axton described the traumatic moments that followed.

"All's I remember is a big bang and then Dad grabbing me out of the fire, and then all my skin was just falling off," Axton said.

His mom called 9-1-1 as her husband stood at the front door, holding her severely burned son.

"So, we got to the car and we were driving as I'm calling the ambulance, I'm like, you guys need to meet me, I'm driving towards you, we need to meet halfway, because he was in so much pain, I just wanted them to get to him as fast as they could to get him his pain under control," Blakely said. "When we got to the hospital, they ended up intubating."

Blakely said EMTs originally transported Axton to the local hospital before he was life flighted to Riley Hospital.

"The first prognosis when we got here and talked to the burn surgeon was 40 to 45% burns," Blakely said. "Three days later, he's still ventilated but they came and they did a surgery to do the debridement of the burns, and he just started healing on his own."

Blakely explained that initially surgeons told her Axton would need multiple surgeries and multiple skin grafts. But, as Axton began healing on his own, doctors estimated he was about 25 percent burned across his body. So, instead of numerous skin grafts, they decided to use a special technology that turns a small square skin graft into a cell spray, using Axton's own cells.

"We take a small piece of skin graft," Dr. Fatih Zor, Axton's doctor, explained. "Instead of using that skin graft as a sheet, we take the skin cells from that graft and make it a cell spray from those cells and spray the wounds with those cells is and cover those with the patient's own cells."

Dr. Zor said this special tool certainly lessens a patient's pain.

"If we take a 10 square centimeter of skin graft, now we have a total area of over 20 square centimeters and the body will heal both wounds, the actual one and the donor site," Dr. Zor explained. "By this way, we do not increase the total wounded area, and it also reduces the total amount of blood loss during the surgery. The pain will be much less compared to conventional skin grafting; The less donor we use, the less pain we cause."

The cell spray technology also avoids what Dr. Zor describes the "meshed appearance of the skin graft."

"So, after the surgery, the wounds heal without significant scarring," Dr. Zor said.

For Blakely, she credits her faith and the devotion of Axton's care team for helping her son survive this horrible accident. She said she is forever grateful to the staff at Riley Hospital.

"It's been amazing," Blakely said. "Everybody has been extremely, extremely kind and caring and compassionate and taking care of him, they've done amazing."