Burn unit helps heal charred bodies, lives
Rv JULIA GOPLERUD
Staff Reporter
The pain that Earl Anderson, 26, experienced when he awoke in the burn unit of the University of Kansas Medical Center was not physical. The flames that had soared from his body of his body also had his nerve endings.
The man who had taken pride in his smooth skin and athletic physique looked in his charred and bandaged body and realized that his dream of becoming a model had ended.
"At first I thought 'Why did it happen to me?' but then I started to realize that I had to take care of business. I set goals and worked at them," Anderson said.
He was burned July 16, 1975, while he was working as a tank truck driver for Cooco Cane Oil. The gasoline he was pumping out of the tanker exploded, igniting his clothes and burning his body.
with the technology available 10 years ago. Anderson would have been dead, Manti M. Mani, clinical nurse specialist.
"in terms of metabolic changes, this is the most severe injury anybody can have." Although burning directly affects the skin, it also affects indirectly every other system of the body. "Mani said...
MANY PEOPLE used to be crippled from the scar tissue resulting from severe burns, he said. Scar tissue grows from the inside and forms raised skin patches that cover the skin the skin tighter and tighter until mobility is hampered.
"Fifteen years ago there was very little we could offer these people. It was something we had to live with. We saved their lives and sent them home deformed," "Mani said."
The burn unit opened in 1973 and provides medical services to victims of second and third-degree burns. The burn units have been in operation for 100,000 of which were severe enough to require hospitalization. Sixty percent of these, like Antoine Lafleur, are burned.
A first-degree burn is a sunburn. A second-degree burn blisters the skin immediately and a third-degree burn causes permanent scarring.
The unit receives 300 cases a year, Mani said. One hundred of the burn victims are hospitalized and two of them have been rescued.
One of the reasons patients are taken to the burn unit is that its patient care area is sterile. The staff must wear isolation clothing in the area, and the rest of the hospital systems are separate from the rest of the hospital.
These precautions are taken because infection is the greatest cause of death in burn victims after they reach the burn unit. Mani said that the bacteria that live harmlessly on the surface of intact skin could grow into the tissue of burned and separated skin and enter the bloodstream, causing infection.
Mani said the air for the systems went through two sets of special filters.
DEHYDRATION ALSO is a serious problem, especially the first few days after a burn is received, he said. A burn patient needs six liters of fluid a day, compared with two liters a day for other people.
When a patient arrives at the unit, his skin is
The bandages are changed twice a day. The patient also is monitored for infection and receives an antihistamine.
washed with water, smeared with an antibiotic cream and then bandaged.
Skin grafts, surgery and a regular exercise program can reduce or prevent crippling, and the use of crutches is recommended.
WHILE THE unburned skin heals from the autograft, the other burned areas are protected by allografts and zenografts. Allografts are usually taken from cadaveres and are sloughed off after three weeks. Zenografts are taken from different species, and remain on for a few hours or days. Maria said.
Surgeons in the unit perform skin grafts on patients with third degree burns. Thin slices of unburned skin are attached or bandaged to the burned areas. This technique can be used in many cases permanently after three to five days. Mami said.
Because of these techniques, Anderson is still a handsome man. He is able to participate in sports.
such as basketball, softball and karate, that he participated in before the accident.
He still is fashion-conscious, but wears long sleeved shirts and slacks away from silk and wool.
The skin on his face and neck is normal, and his movements are unrestricted. It is only when he loses control that his movements become erratic.
The skin on his hands looks like the pigkin surture of a football, and the bones ripple underneath the tightly drawn skin as if he were wearing a thin leather glove.
AROUND HIS thumbs and the sides of his fingers,
the skin has lost its pigment, and is starkly pale as
any other.
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY
Anderson said his battle against the raised scars and crippled joints associated with severe burns was slow and painful. Although most patients are in the burn unit for three to four weeks, he was released after two months to when he could feed himself and walk again.
"IT WAS LIKE being born again, like being a child
see BURR back near."
KANSAN Problems frustrate students' social live See story page eight
COMFORTABLE
Vol. 89. No. 137
The council also decided to ask the Associated Students of Kansas to consider fee waivers for graduate students in order to stump lobbying concerns for next year.
MIKKELSEEN SAID although the council had refrained from formulating specific funding outlines for a graduate student senate, it would fund programs which graduate students said they wanted. The questionnaire given to thern last month.
The council also decided to ask the Student Senate for $4,000 in addition to the $15.018 already approved. The $4,000 is used for faculty costs of the Graduate News Network.
Sam Zweifel
"An undergraduate senate will never represent the interests of the graduate students." Mikkelsen said.
"I PLANNING to meet with Amber Friday to discuss the possibilities," he said. David Amber is vice chancellor for student affairs.
Mikkelsen said his tentative plan included that a graduate student senate would gain control over activity fee funds within the first year. He said during the second year, the graduate student senate would have to make decisions which are awarded by the University.
Grad council plans to form own senate
Mikkelsen said that in the past, the Student Senate had not understood the importance of graduate students should get a proportional amount of money to what they pay.
"I can't understand the animosity of graduate students felt by the undergraduates," he said. "The Student Senate has alienated graduate students."
Zweifel said he supported the separation.
The Graduate Student Council decided last night to begin plans to withdraw from the Student Senate and form its own graduate student senate.
"The Senate just claims no minority gets what it inits." Mikkelsen said.
Although no formal decision was made as to when the separation would occur, Mark Mikkelsen, executive coordinator of the Graduate Student Council, said he and Sam Zweifel, council member, would begin today to rewrite the rules and conduct the Student Senate to separate graduate students from undergraduates.
He said he expected to present his proposal to the Student Senate either at tomorrow's meeting or at a meeting the following week.
BvLYNN BYCZYNSKI
Stan Keporter
The outlook for solar heating was dismal last winter at Sumpower House, the Kansas Power and Light Co.'s experimental solar炉 at 3017 Riverview Road.
Electric bills for the house soared to $350 in January and KPL officials offered only dismal energy as the explanation for the house's bury energy consumption.
But local solar energy advocates, touring Supower House yesterday, advanced some theories of their own about what went wrong with the solar energy system.
Robert McColli, KU professor of geography, who is building his own solar house behind Learned Hall, discussed flaws in Sunpower House's design with members of the KU Ecology Club and the Lawrence Appreciate Technology Collective.
One of the main problems with the house, McColl said, is its location. Built on the hillsides, it was a great challenge.
area, the quarter-million dollar solar energy project is shaded from much of the sun's radiance.
"THEY SAY THEY'RE GETING only three tails of sun day. I doubt if they're wearing sunglasses."
Marvin Stacken, KPL, commercial marketing manager, said snow and cloudy weather caused work from working during much of the winter, forcing the system to switch to expensive heating.
Supower House was built with passive solar features such as double-paned glass, double "air lock" doors and few north-facing windows.
But Nina and Bill Redlin, who are renting the house from KPI, found their electric bills comparable to those of many of their neighbors with conventional houses.
After the $550 January electric bill, KPI agreed to pay everything over $60. In
February, the bill was $282. In March, it dropped to $191.
ONE POSSIBLE cause of the high bills, McColl said, was the use of an unheated room above the garage. The Redlin's two children had been using it as a playroom, leaving the adjoining door open to heat the room.
But the part of the house that has caused the most concern to KPL officials and to Bob Gould, the house's designer, also puzzled McColl.
That problem spot is a greenhouse that opens onto the living room and kitchen with a glass wall. The door was designed to provide extra heat during the day and to absorb enough heat in its winter months.
"It's been freezing up. That's in-comprehensible to me," McColl said.
TO SAVE THE PLANS, Nina Feedlin said he had been leaving the door to the church in the early hours.
That, plus a lack of insulation beneath the brick floor, could be contributing to the high temperature.
Next winter, Stacken said, the greenhouse will have shades that will keep in the heat.
KPI has put meters throughout the house to try to pinpoint failures in the solar system. But the data will not be released for six months to a year. Stacken said.
"We're not going to publish anything until at least a year from when we start getting paid."
About 25 members of the two organizations grilled KPI representatives for more than an hour about technical aspects of SunPower House's design.
"There's no question about that. It's a
house. But it's high technology."
McGee
Most seemed to leave with the impression that the house was well designed but not well furnished.
Convicted killer sentenced to life
Le Harris, a 29-year-old Denver man,
was sentenced to life imprisonment
yesterday for his involvement in the 1977
robbery of Sam Norwood, a Lawrence
businessman.
Harris pleaded guilty April 4 to the first-degree murder of Norwood, 30, former manager of the F.W. Woolworth Co. store, and was sent five days before he was to face a jury trial.
Judge James Paddock of the Douglas County District court told Harris after sentencing him to life imprisonment that the court thought Harris was "Of such danger to
society that the court feels that under no condition should you be placed at liberty."
After the sentencing, Harris was escorted out of the courtroom by four officers of the Douglas County sheriff's office, who were present during the proceeding.
Harris is to be transported to the Kansas State Pententiyary at Lansing today. Paddock said Harris would be credited with time spent in jail since December 27, 1978, when he was extradited to Kansas from Colorado.
Mike Malone, Douglas County district
attorney, said the possibility of giving Harris less than a life sentence was removed when Harris was found to have been guilty of the commission of a crime against a person.
Although sentenced to life imprisonment, Harris could be eligible for parole in 15 years.
Harris' days in court may not be over. Authorities in Long Beach, Calif., have charged him with a double killing there in December 1977. Officials at the Colorado State Pentitentiary at Canyon City are investigating the possibility that Harris was
involved in a killing there while he was an inmate in 1976.
Malone said California and Colorado authorities had been notified that Harris would be made available to each state temporarily for prosecution.
"From his statements and philosophy I consider Harris to be a danger. If he is prosecuted in California and Colorado it will make him never paired." Malone said.
However, he said, the other states may not want to prosecute because Harris has been sentenced to life imprisonment in Kansas.
Auction business booming in barn
By DAVID LEWIS
Staff Reporter
165 here    now 170 . . . 170   now 5
175 here    now 180 . . . 180   now 5
175 here    now 190 . . . 190   sold
On a muddy lot next to a silver barn, a group of about 50 persons surrounds a man who is sitting on the ground and not be seen and a gray mist can be felt in the air. A yellow lawn mower is the main at-
A white sign on the side entrance of
the barn reads in red letters: "You bring it,
we provide."
Throngs of wide-eyed people then begin streaming inside, browsing through furniture, relics and household paraphernalia on display in the barn. Nine television sets are on the auction block. Wooden furniture is piled to the ceiling. The adjoining room has a built-in coffee table. Would-be buyers clamber shoulder-to-shoulder into the wooden bleachers.
STRICKER'S AUCTION Barn, 143rd Street and Gardner Lake Road, Gardner, 80 miles southeast of Lawrence, sells furniture radius of Gardner families within a 100-mile radius of Gardner.
Business is booming.
"I bought this building with the intention of renting it out. However, no one would rent it for a decent price. Someone came up with the idea of starting an auction and then I found out there was an auctioner school being started," he said.
Jerry Stricker, auctioneer and owner of the business, started auctioning four years ago.
"I found out that you chant more or less unconsciously I feel I can chant just about anything."
Stricker said he sells an average of three items a minute.
"IALSO AUCTION estates, houses, farms and liquidated companies," he said.
Stricker was confident about his business. "We offer as much as anybody in the
Midwest on a week-to-week basis. When we have good weather, 450 to 500 people will stay in town.
The auction starts at 6:30 p.m. every Monday. Rockefeller has a staff of 14 persons.
The furniture is of all types and generally is in good condition, he said. Stricker believes his prices are competitive with anybody's.
Some, however, come to the auction to have a good time as well as to get a good
"I LIKE to see people and like to find good bargains." Ann Dunlain, Olathe, said. "I have found about $700 worth of furniture here. I buy for the Jawhawk Antique."
A woman from DeSloe said her husband looked for iron materials to purchase.
"My husband likes to buy iron. When he gets a load, he takes it to Kansas City. We come here every Monday night," the woman said.
Jule Welch, a resident of Jayhawker Towers, came away with $115 worth of furniture at Striker's auction. She bought a three-seater sofa and a stand with nirlands and a color television set.
"THE TELEVISION alone would have cost more than $151 if I would have bought the furniture first-hand," she said. "They even sold a stove for $5."
Stricker said customers even buy strange items.
"I have said everything you can imagine.
When I first started the job, I sold this antique decoy for $20. He had a real duckbill," he said.
Most KU students are unaware of the auction he said.
"We haven't advertised in 'the Kanaan since last semester and most have forgotten it."
Stricker said business usually picked up in the spring.
"Business is been really good. Auctioneering is my only business now," he said.
Jerry Stricker
Staff photo by CHRIS TOOTT