When nurses told Anice Kruger that the first of the dressings had come off, revealing perfect pink skin beneath, the stress she had been under showed.
She exhaled, and when she did, her breath sounded as if it had been building since her three-year-old went into surgery last week.
Then she scrunched up her face and laughed loudly.
Last week, Pippie became the first South African to have skin grown for her in a lab – in Boston, US – from her own skin cells, and to have it transplanted onto her body.
“It took all over, there is no infection… The skin is completely attached, but still see-through,” said Anice once she had calmed down.
A tired-looking Dr Ridwan Mia confirmed that the skin had taken on 90 percent of little Pippie’s burns.
“At the beginning they gave me a 10 percent survival chance. Now 90 percent of the skin has taken, so that’s 100 percent awesome,” said Anice.
“I can’t believe it,” said Pippie’s father Erwin, who said he hadn’t been stressed anyway.
“I stopped stressing three months ago. I freed myself… It doesn’t help to stress about something when you don’t know the outcome.”
The past week hasn’t been without its drama. Pippie was sedated with her limbs in splints as it was vital that she kept utterly still because if the skin had been disrupted, it would not have taken properly.
On Sunday night, staff were concerned that Pippie wasn’t sedated properly and would wake up.
Then on Wednesday morning, Mia came into Pippie’s room to inspect her dressings. He had been smelling them to check for infection.
On this morning he detected a terrible smell. He worried that there was an infection brewing. But it turned out to be a dirty nappy.
On Monday night, Anice was dressed from head to toe in Pippie’s favourite colour for the “miracle day”.
She had on pink glitter shoes, a pink-and-white polka dot dress, a big pink bow, a French manicure in different shades of pink and her signature pink hair.
She carried with her a light-pink iPhone and a dark-pink iPad for sending out info to some of her 30 000 Facebook followers and for receiving pictures of Pippie’s progress.
“Margaret Thatcher is nothing,” remarked Erwin, commenting on his wife’s strength.
But he admits the joke-telling, laughing and in-control woman has had her ups and downs.
She struggled in the beginning, when Pippie’s future was uncertain and, even now, feels guilty being away from their other child, the 11-month-old Arno.
Anice said seeing her child sedated and on a ventilator all week has been difficult for her.
So Erwin has been taking his wife to the movies and restaurants, trying to keep her mind off their daughter’s surgery.
“You have to keep busy so that you don’t remember… If you’re sitting there doing nothing, the memories come flooding back,” he said.
Those are the memories of New Year’s Eve last year, when 80 percent of Pippie’s body was burnt when the gel fire lighter Erwin was using to light a braai exploded.
Mia said they expected Pippie would spend two to three more weeks in hospital, before undergoing rehabilitation.
From today she’ll slowly be taken off the ventilator and woken up.
The Star