He can fasten his own seat belt now. And hold a spoon. These are the small feats that Lissa Buchi marvels over as she watches her son continue what doctors call a "remarkable recovery."
Lance Buchi, burned over 90 percent of his body after falling into a scalding hot pot at Yellowstone National Park in August, was released Thursday from the University of Utah Hospital, just 14 weeks after the accident. Before going home he went with his family to view the Festival of Trees, including the tree decorated in his name.
Now that he's home, Lance will begin intensive rehabilitation, four to six hours a day, seven days a week. The rehab, plus management of his wound dressings, "is basically a full-time job, more than a full-time job," said Stephen Morris, who helped direct Lance's care during his months in the burn unit.
Morris and Lissa Buchi held a press conference Friday to discuss Lance's progress. Lance was busy attending a physical therapy session, said his mom.
"He's doing tasks we didn't think he'd do for months," Morris said.
There were no guarantees at first, he said, that Lance or his good friend Tyler Montague would survive. The 18-year-olds, both summer employees at Yellowstone, fell into a 178-degree pool, on Aug. 23 as they were taking a nighttime walk. A third friend, Sara Hulphers, 20, died from her burns.
During the first painful, touch-and-go weeks of their recovery, Lance and Tyler were in side-by-side beds at the hospital, only occasionally able to muster a wave at each other. Tyler, who was released from the hospital several days before Lance, will attend therapy with him. "I'm so glad they have each other," Buchi said.
According to Buchi, Lance "vividly" remembers falling into the thermal pool. "He thought it was ground" he was jumping onto, she said. After falling in, he tried to pull himself out by grabbing onto the dirt, pulled himself part way out, then fell in a second time.
Lance spends a lot of time now thinking about "the meaning and importance of life," Buchi said. "He's always been a deep thinker." Among his friends, and readers of his Web site, Lance is known as a philosopher, his mother said. "He had many people following his writings" and has received thousands of e-mails since the accident.
Both she and Lance anticipate that he eventually will be "totally normal." In the meantime, said Morris, Lance's rehabilitation will include six months of strengthening and range of motion exercises, additional skin graft surgery, and continued nutritional monitoring.
Lance, who weighed 180 pounds before the accident, lost 51 pounds during his hospital stay, from a combination of muscle wasting and inactivity, Morris said. In earlier times, before doctors understood the importance of nutrition to burn care management, many burn patients succumbed to malnutrition, he said.
The worst of Lance's pain is probably behind him, Morris said. "But he probably won't be pain-free for several months." All indications are that his extensive skin grafts — "cultured epithelium" made by taking shavings from his scalp and growing them in a test tube — are doing well, Morris added.
Lance's sisters, Anna and Alli, and his 3-month-old nephew Isaac, also attended Friday's press conference. Alli recalled the night her family got word about his accident. About 3 a.m., her mother woke her, told her that Lance had been hurt, and drove to the hospital. "I lay there and couldn't sleep. I was pacing around. Then I knelt down and prayed and felt overwhelming comfort." At that point she didn't know, she said, whether it was Lance's foot or his whole body that had fallen into the hot pot. "But I knew he would survive."
Lissa Buchi, too, said she always felt that Lance would survive, even during the days when, hour to hour, her hopes would be dashed by yet another infection. The months were full of highs and lows, she said.
The best high point, she said, happened Thursday — when she watched a nurse finally erase Lance's name from the list of burn unit patients.
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