The Regional One Health Wound Care Center treats patients ranging in injury from severe-burn wounds to cancer treatment-related radiation damage. Regional One has the region’s only multiplace Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy chamber. At the age of 39, Richard was severely burned by a backyard bonfire when a canister typically containing diesel fuel was mistakenly replaced with gasoline. Tending to the bonfire resulted in an explosion that almost killed Richie. He was burned from his hairline to his feet. Seventy percent of his body was severely burned, with only the top of his head and parts of the back of his body escaping the fire. Emergency responders in the Missouri bootheel town of Kennett, where Shirley lives and where Richie was entertaining friends, knew the area hospitals couldn’t help him. He was airlifted to Regional One Health’s Burn Center. He spent about half of those 10 months on life support. Shirley left her job and lived on Regional One’s 2nd floor, where there’s a lounge with recliners for family members who stay overnight with their loved ones. Shirley recalls that Richie would have died more than a few times during those critical ICU months, had it not been for the calm response and skilled attention of several doctors and nurses who saved Richie at every twist and turn his medical condition took. “I knew that the ventilator was keeping him alive,” says Shirley. “One time when I was at the bed with him, his ventilator blew out and air hit my face. I started crying and Dr. Hickerson calmly walked over, told the staff what he needed for Richie and told another person to take me to the waiting room. He told me to go and he’d be there in 10 minutes.” He would joke with the doctors and staff even when rehab was hard and hurt. Ten minutes later, Dr. Hickerson joined her in the waiting room and said, “I told you I’d be here!” Richie was saved. It was still hard on both Richie and Shirley when he was finally able to leave the ICU, but at least now they knew he was going to make it. As the nurses began to move him around so he could see daylight and slowly begin to bring motion back to his body, Richie’s personality also returned to life. 17 REGIONAL ONE HEALTH FOUNDATION
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