KayBee10

Holy balls! Were you hurt?

And the grilled cheese?

Broke my clavicle but saved my life. Pretty painful but I call it a win

Seconding this. I used to sell synthetic skin graft for 3rd degree burns and was on contract with university med center. I've seen my share of burn victims and even if they are rescued at the scene and make it out of surgery, most of them die from sepsis within weeks.

The infection eventually infiltrates organs and you go into multi-organ failure. It's really awful and once infection is that widespread there's no coming back.

I remember one 60ish year old guy who had 3rd degree burns to over 70% of his body. The surgery (debridement and stapling on synthetic skin) took about 6.5 hours. That's really long for a burn victim because their body is in such bad shock that they can't handle a lot of anesthesia/ there's often complications. You have to keep the OR super warm, since they are already losing all their body heat, everybody's sweating their asses off... anyways... we used $220k worth of skin graft (that's with the hospital getting a 41% discount, but don't even get me started on the mark up/discount game of the medical device world). The guy died 3 weeks later from sepsis, with pretty much every organ in some stage of failure. If I remember correctly it's usually kidneys and liver to go first, followed closely by the heart (I could be wrong here, and I'm sure it varies case by case).

It probably sounds really awful that I remember the dollar amount that I billed the hospital, but when you're commission only, you tend to remember the severity of surgical cases based on what you bill.

That was my first burn case (previously had ortho/spine experience only), and it definitely had a lasting effect on me. Definitely something I'll never forget.