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Ten-year-old Caryn Stewart doesn’t even think about the wrinkly skin blanketing her badly scarred back, legs, and arms. After all, it’s who she is.
“I’m just like anyone else,” she says matter-of-factly.
Indeed she is, with one possible exception. Caryn has learned at a very early age how important it is to treasure your friends and relatives, the animals you love, and all the caregivers who rally around you when something goes terribly wrong.
Easter Sunday 2005. Beautiful day, clear skies.
After a family dinner at a restaurant in West Union, Iowa, Caryn, her sister, and her mother climb aboard a small airplane piloted by a relative, anticipating a fun ride.
Instead, the plane crashes on the runway and bursts into flames.
Caryn is the only one to emerge from the wreckage alive. With her hair in flames, she runs into the arms of her father, Brian, who witnesses the crash from 1,500 feet away. Her scorched little body is so hot that when she steps on Brian’s foot, his shoelace melts.
“Scariest thing I ever saw,” Brian says.
A short AirCare emergency helicopter ride later, Caryn is in the care of the specialists in the Burn Treatment Center at University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics. Seventy-five percent of her body is burned, her collar bone is fractured, and she has smoke inhalation injury.
She spends the next eight weeks in the Burn Intensive Care Unit, unable to eat solid food or venture outdoors. She cannot speak for 50 days.
Along the way, nurses scrub her sensitive wounds to prevent infection. Doctors graft skin from unaffected areas onto places where her skin was too damaged to re-grow. She undergoes painful dressing changes every day, and twice-daily therapy sessions.
Most of her physician care is directed by burn specialist Barbara Latenser, MD; other physician contributors include Gerald Kealey, MD, and Lucy Wibbenmeyer, MD.
Somehow, amidst tragedy and grief, Brian remembers a world of family-centered, compassionate care.
“Everyone was in synch,” he says. “They have to be. If they’re not, something can go wrong. Everybody really came through.”
After leaving the UI Burn Treatment Center, Caryn spends another 11 weeks at Covenant Medical Center in Waterloo undergoing rehabilitation.
Today, gratitude flows in many directions.
Forever remembered by Brian are the many neighbors who helped harvest his crops and feed his livestock during Caryn’s hospitalization.
Deeply appreciated are the family and friends who offered comfort and solace through the burials of his wife, his other daughter, and the plane’s pilot.
Words aren’t enough to describe how both he and Caryn feel about the whole health care team, which not only included multiple UI physicians and nurses but also the rehabilitation specialists in Waterloo and Caryn’s health care providers in West Union.
There are too many people to mention by name, though Latenser’s name pops up. Both share a love for horses. In fact, the two have gone riding together a couple of times.
“Oh yeah, she’s got a great personality,” Caryn says of Latenser.
Caryn has quite a personality of her own. The reigning Miss Junior Dairy for Fayette County speaks with clarity, confidence, and purpose beyond her years.
Her strength comes in part, she says, from the many animals who populate her dad’s farm, including horses like Hot Shot and Snickerdoodles.
“They’re always glad to see me, no matter what,” she says.
Not surprisingly, Caryn thinks she might want to be a nurse someday.
“That way I could help other people,” she says. “I’d like that!”
Leaders in burn care
More than 800 pediatric and adult burn/trauma patients received care in the UI Burn Treatment Center last year. It is the only burn center in Iowa, and one of only about 45 burn centers verified by the American Burn Association and the American College of Surgeons in the U.S. For more information, visit www.uihealthcare.com/depts/burntreatmentcenter/.
—Michael Sondergard
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