Tom Corwin Staff Writer
1 September 2007
Augusta Chronicle
© 2007 Augusta Chronicle. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All Rights Reserved.
Nick Flynn's life was saved by hundreds of people he will never meet, people whose names he will never know.
After a welding accident and fire burned 80 percent of his body, surgeons at the Joseph M. Still Burn Center at Doctors Hospital kept Mr. Flynn alive by covering him with cadaver skin. The center is the largest user of this donated skin in the country, the medical director said, and it is becoming increasingly harder to find.
"We've actually had a significant shortage over the last two years," said burn surgeon Fred Mullins. "We've been calling every tissue bank in the country to provide skin. Our volume has increased tremendously. And it's been hard keeping up with that."
Last year, the center used 24,883 square feet of donated skin, said Tanya Simpson, the director of burn services for Doctors.
"They're definitely our largest customer," said Tom Cycyota, the president and CEO of AlloSource, the nonprofit tissue bank that collects more than half of the donated skin in the country. "I don't know of anybody larger than them, and that would include the Army burn center down in San Antonio."
The donated skin is used for those with third-degree burns who have lost the protective barrier of the skin, Dr. Mullins said.
"It will actually take like their own skin," he said. "It will have a protective mechanism, to fight bacteria. It will also hold in the tissue fluid more."
As in Mr. Flynn's case, it also provides time to take some unburned skin, ship it to a company that grows more skin from it, and then provide a base for those cultured skin cells.
The problem is getting the skin donation. Of those families approached about it after a patient's death, only about 35 percent consent to a tissue donation such as skin, Mr. Cycyota said.
Donated skin is taken from the back and the legs, so it should not affect funeral plans, he said.
"All tissue donation allows for an open casket regardless of what tissue you donate," he said.
It is important to be clear with family about your wishes if you want to donate, Mr. Cycyota said.
"The big thing is to make sure you tell your family," he said.
Family is what kept Mr. Flynn going after his accident in November 2005 at his home in the rural mountain community of Landrum, S.C. Ironically, he was creating a "burn barrel" for a friend to burn trash in by cutting the top off a 55-gallon barrel. The barrel still had fumes in it that Mr. Flynn hadn't been warned about.
"Before I even got a hole in it, the barrel exploded and it blew me roughly 30 feet," he said. The flash fire melted the synthetic fabric of his uniform onto his skin as curious neighbors came up the road.
He was airlifted to the burn center, and doctors kept him in a drug-induced coma for more than six months while they performed surgery after surgery and applied more and more skin.
"His face was burned so bad we had to sew his eyes shut for a period of time just to prevent them from scarring up," Dr. Mullins said.
The hardest part for Mr. Flynn was right after he was brought back.
"I had to learn how to walk all over again," he said. "I had to learn how to eat, I had to learn how to live again. To be honest with you, from time to time I thought about giving up. But giving up is not in my creed."
He knows he made it because he had help from his parents, the burn center and all of those people he doesn't know.
"One thing first and foremost, I want to thank God that I'm here," he said. "But as far as the people who donated the skin, I am grateful to those people. I have no idea who they are. However, I am very grateful to them and my heart goes out to their families. Because without them, I would not be here."
WANT TO BE A DONOR?
People interested in becoming organ and tissue donors can call LifeLink of Georgia in Augusta at (706) 854-0333. The office also covers Aiken and Edgefield counties in South Carolina. Or go to: www.lifelinkfound.org or www.donatelife.net.
Reach Tom Corwin at (706) 823-3213 or tom.corwin@augustachronicle.com.
