NurseWeek: Courage Under Fire

"I kind of reassured her day-to-day that everything was continuing to be OK," Barron said. "She felt comfortable enough when I was here that she could go out and do stuff and be with the kids and not be right at his bedside."

And, Barron said, "She kind of reassured me that everything that I was doing was helping her."

Slowly, the willfulness that saw Schechterle through death-defying surgeries also allowed him to do more and more for himself. "There are still some things he can't do, but mostly he does everything himself," Barron said.

As a caregiver, patient advocate and friend, Barron said that to this day she has to resist the impulse to step in when she sees Schechterle struggling with tasks.

"There are lots of little things that I still think about and laugh about now," she said. But in separate interviews, both she and Schechterle recalled the importance of a burrito in their relationship.

"We have these health shakes that the docs all want the patients to drink," Barron said. "One night I said, 'Jas, just please try it.' "

"I'd lost about 60 pounds," Schechterle said, but "they were just terrible drinks. God, they tasted so bad. I remember one day I told Sara, 'I'm not drinking that stuff anymore. Please don't force me to.' I think she understood.

"The next thing I knew, she had gone out of the hospital and bought me a big burrito and was spoon-feeding it to me. I'll never forget that. I don't know if that's something [the medical staff] would have encouraged her to do, but I thought it was awesome. It meant a lot to me," he said.

Her voice betrays the emotion of the day in Schechterle's care that meant the most to her. "The biggest thing was seeing him the morning that he left," she said.

Schechterle admitted that for all he had faced, and continues to face in rehabilitation and as a public figure, "I was very scared to leave county hospital. I'd been there for five months. I was a very different person, very limited in my abilities. I was comfortable at county."

On Schechterle's last morning there, Barron said, "He told me, 'Sara, they brought me in here on a stretcher, but if they think I'm leaving on one, they're crazy. I'm going to walk out of here.' "

Suzie brought street clothes, and he put them on, Barron said. "His partner, Bryan Chapman, and one of his good friends, Shayne [Tuchfarber], were in full police uniform on either side of him and escorted him out of here. He walked all the way out of the center, all the way out of the hospital to the front of the trauma bay, and got on a stretcher and went to rehab.

"I was able to ride with him in the back of the ambulance," Barron said. It was staffed by the same firefighters who had pulled Schechterle from his burning car. "They came back and transported him to rehab."

The Pulse profiles Jackie Heinle, who is regarded throughout Iowa and nationally for innovation and advancing the care of burn patients as nurse manager of the University of Iowa's Burn Treatment Center in Iowa City.

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Courage to survive

To make sense of Jason Schechterle's fiery ordeal, one only has to look past his disfigured face and see that the Phoenix police officer remains a public servant, but with a new, special public: children recovering from burn injuries.

For one week each summer, children who have suffered burns over at least 10 percent of their bodies gather for Camp Courage, a full-tilt week of activities under the auspices of the Foundation for Burns and Trauma. This independent nonprofit organization is allied with The Arizona Burn Center at Maricopa Medical Center in Phoenix.

"You could've heard a pin drop," said Paul Mueller, director of Burn Support Services and camp director, of Schechterle's talk with campers last year. "The kids were just totally enamored by him. It's hard to keep them together in one room and from running around, but they were sitting on their hands. You couldn't have moved them out of there if you had wanted to," he said.

"Kids love gross stuff, so they were asking a lot of detailed questions," Mueller said. But they all could relate to Schechterle's experience of being trapped in a fireball that was his police cruiser after it was struck from behind and exploded the night of March 26, 2001.

"He's a great role model," Mueller said-which is what Sara Barron, a burn center RN, told Schechterle in the five months of medical recovery that led to his rehabilitation, which continues today.

The camp, held last year in Prescott because the northern Arizona summers are cooler and easier on burn patients, is staffed by nurses, firefighters, police officers, emergency medical personnel, schoolteachers and other civic-minded people.

RNs, as well as a physician and support personnel, run a camp infirmary for dressing changes and ongoing burn treatment, as well as the inevitable cuts and bruises that come with horseback riding, hiking, fishing, rock climbing, archery and rifle ranges, and, to a lesser extent, arts and crafts.

"We have a full triage unit," Mueller said. "Just short of doing surgeries, we bring up everything we need," including truckloads of sunblock to protect the campers' developing skin.

This year for the first time, five burn survivors from Calgary, Canada, will be among at least 120 campers from Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah, Colorado and Hermosillo, Mexico. The camp costs a little more than $1,000 per child, but because of the foundation and sponsorships, families are asked to pay only a $10 application fee, Mueller said. "And if they don't have it, it doesn't matter. The kids are still going to go."

Mueller suffered third-degree burns over 25 percent of his body in a camping accident two years ago and for a while was hospitalized with Schechterle. Many people don't realize the step it takes to go from burn victim to burn survivor, he said.

"I would say that the majority of kids coming into camp are burn survivors, but there are a couple, maybe, that are still victimized. They haven't moved ahead in life," Mueller said. "But once they go through the one-week, magical transformation of camp, they become burn survivors."

-Phil McPeck