The Five-Month Fight

At the time, it looked like a fine game to six-year-old Mike Rector and his two playmates. Whooping it up as cowboys & Indians, the playmates tied Mike up in a nearby garage, bound his feet and set fire to him. By the time his mother had smothered the flames, 70% of Mike's sturdy little body was deeply scarred. At Washington's Casualty Hospital, Chief Surgeon Joseph Rogers Young took one look and told Mrs. Rector that her son probably could not live until morning.

But that was last November and Mike is still alive. He is one of the few victims of such extensive burns ever to pull through. Still in the hospital, he is now a thin, slight figure wrapped from neck to feet in bandages. His frail legs are bound to stiff splints to keep them from twisting. Pulling Mike through has been a long and complicated job. To prevent the formation of blisters and the deadly "white hemorrhage" (loss of body fluids and proteins through the raw, granulating flesh), Dr. Young covered Mike's burns with vaseline gauze, swathed him in a massive (five inches thick) supplementary pressure dressing of mechanic's waste.

The first skin grafts, three 4-in. by 8-in. squares volunteered by Mike's father, were sewn onto the flesh. Later, when sewing became impossible because of Mike's weakened condition Dr. Young stuck skin grafts on with thrombin, a clotting agent which served as a sort of human glue. Through the weeks there were over 100 plasma transfusions, eight skin graftings, endless vitamin and protein injections, billions of units of penicillin.

For 16 weeks Mike's parents shared a 24-hour vigil by his bedside. His father gave up his job as an auto repairman, his mother turned over the care of her other five children to a social worker. The hospital set up a special kitchen so that Mrs. Rector could cook the protein-rich eggs and hamburgers her son required to build up his ravaged tissue, coax him into eating.

The hospital and District Health Department footed hospital bills (already upward of $3,500); laboratories ran expensive tests free; the Red Cross furnished the necessary plasma. Six strangers, all servicemen, volunteered skin grafts. In December, when Mike was at his lowest, the simultaneous arrival of four enormous birthday cakes from well-wishers gave his morale a badly needed boost.

Last week, resting comfortably after three successive skin grafts, Mike heard some good news. If all goes well in the next few months, Dr. Young thinks he may be ready to go home before fall.

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