Pointe Coupee Fire District 2 Chief Aaron Edwards is asking everyone to keep his family in their prayers after an accident put his 2-year-old son in the hospital.
Aaron Edwards Jr. had an accident at home and suffered severe burns to his neck and chest on Sunday. The toddler was airlifted to the burn center at Our Lady of Lourdes in Lafayette.
“It’s taken a mental toll on us as a family,” Chief Edwards said. “I was on duty with the Baton Rouge Fire Department at the time. I was two hours away, so that was hard.”
On Monday morning, Edwards said his son has to wear nearly a full-body wrap that will help give the burns time to heal. He said his son is expected to keep them on until Thursday and at that point, the doctors will decide if skin graft surgery will be needed depending on the progress.
Edwards said his son suffered a fever but was able to break it.
Edwards has been a firefighter since 2009 and he said his wife works at a local urgent care facility seeing a burn victim wasn’t anything new to them. However, the chief said seeing your child in that situation changes things.
“It’s something that we’ve seen, but when it’s your child, your training kind of goes out the window,” he said.
The chief said his son doesn’t entirely understand what happened, but he can identify how the situation made him feel at that point.
“He keeps saying ‘hot’, so we know something hot hurt him,” Edwards said. “He’s scared to touch a lot of things right now.”
Edwards said his son was up early Monday morning and enjoyed a walk through the hospital.
On Wednesday, members of the Pointe Coupee Fire District 2 announced they have started raising money that will go directly to Edwards and his wife to help them focus solely on their young son’s recovery.
You can donate here.
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