Ben Swanson is ready for yet another in a series of operations to repair the damaged skin on his badly burned body.
This next operation at Harborview Medical Center’s renowned burn treatment center will involve restoring his eyelids.
At 23, his youth, courage and good humor help him cope with the ordeal of corrective skin surgery and therapy for the burns he suffered Feb. 5.
Showing the inner spirit that enables him to deal with his misfortune, Ben acknowledges he is something of a curiosity: “Kids stare at you, but most people are real good about it. It’s tough. . . . But I’m really into getting better.”
Considering his disfiguring injuries, Ben’s upbeat manner can be disarming.
“He has always been like that,” said his father, John. “But this has been pretty traumatic for him.”
Ben is a mechanic and the accident that brought him this misfortune involved gasoline. He had flushed the old gasoline out of a 1981 pickup truck he had bought. A light fixture in the garage was knocked down and caught fire.
Unable to stop the blaze, Ben grabbed the gas can to get it out of the garage.
“I guess it splashed on me,” recalled Ben. His clothes on fire, he ran into the house and rolled on the floor. His roommate saw what was happening and dumped a pitcher of water on his head.
Ben’s face, arms and legs were burned — about 45 percent of his body. He was taken to Harborview’s burn unit, where he spent the next 67 days.
At the hospital, Ben went through corrective surgeries and regular physical therapy sessions. For three weeks, his left hand was surgically embedded beneath the skin of his lower abdomen to protect it and encourage skin healing around the fingers. He now wears “pressure garments” on his hands, legs and torso (whence the skin grafts were taken) to reduce scar buildup.
In this operation, Ben will receive new grafts on his eyelids so he can close his eyes. The lower eyelids, burned along with the rest of his face, have scarred, shrunken and “flipped outward.”
Following a physical checkup, he is wheeled into the operating room and put under general anesthesia.
Dr. Loren Engrav, chief plastic and reconstructive surgeon at the burn unit, and Dr. Ben Maser, a plastic surgery resident from the University of Washington Medical School, together evaluate Ben’s eyes and search for a donor skin site. They decide upon the armpit side of the upper right arm where the skin is pliable and of proper thickness for use as substitute eyelids.
Engrav and his surgical team work simultaneously at different locations.
The patient’s eyeballs are lubricated and covered with a blue plastic cap. Sutures are placed through the edges of Ben’s lower eyelids. Small scissorlike clamps are attached to the ends of each suture line to act as temporary anchors. The eyelids are pulled up and the eyes shut.
Maser and Engrav cut away tissue below the lower lids while another surgical resident, Dr. Katya Knowlton, cuts a three-inch, football-shape section of donor skin from Ben’s underarm. After removing his scarred lower eyelids, Engrav and Maser suture the donor skin onto each eyelid, forming a new lower lid.
Completing the eyelid grafts is left to the resident doctors as Engrav turns his attention to Ben’s mouth. Scar tissue has formed around the edges, making his mouth difficult to open.
Engrav cuts away a triangle of scar tissue on one side of the mouth and pulls the inside corner of the mouth out to suture over the area. He has pulled the lip in the corner of Ben’s mouth up and out. With Engrav watching, Knowlton does the same for the other corner. The surgery effectively widens Ben’s mouth, allowing it greater range of motion.
Maser completes the suturing on the eyelids. He removes the protective blue caps and sews Ben’s eyelids shut. He packs them in gauze. Ben’s eyes will remain sewn shut for a week.
When the time comes to remove the sutures and allow their patient to open his eyes, Engrav and members of the burn team come into Ben’s room.
“Well, Mr. Swanson, how are you?” Engrav asks.
“I’m waiting for you to tell me,” Ben responds, prompting laughter.
After the eyelid surgery, Ben is fitted with a “pressure mask” of clear plastic he will wear in an attempt to reduce scarring on his face.
Ben isn’t crazy about this latest accouterment. He has already endured stares and even hostility in response to his appearance. He has heard about another burn patient who wore a facial pressure mask into a bank, prompting a teller to call the police to report a bank robber.
“He’s got more surgeries next month,” said his mother, Ellen. “Sometimes, he says he’d just like to go to sleep for the next year.”
