I looked for her right arm and couldn’t find it. I was hoping that it had not been amputated all the way. In previous surgeries, her right hand, to midway up her arm, had to be amputated because damage from the burns had been so extensive.
The oxygen tube had been removed from her nose. Her face looked much better, including the skin graft from her chest to her cheek. There are many other signs of positive healing.
Her right arm couldn’t be seen because surgeons had fused it to her hip in a procedure known as a flap. Her right arm had been burned to the bone at the elbow and the fusion to her hip was done to grow skin there.
This was my third visit to see Sherry and her mom at the Jaycee Burn Center at UNC Hospitals in Chapel Hill.
Sherry Bean was raped, bludgeoned and set on fire with pine straw last March 24 and left for dead. Thanks to a tree-trimming crew that found her in the early morning and noticed a leg moving, she has overcome monumental physical distress, including two bouts with pneumonia and very painful burn and plastic surgeries. Her assailant is still at large. Little is known about the circumstances leading up to this horrendous crime. Sherry was given medication to make her forget the trauma that she underwent.
She’s been in the hospital for a little over six months now and faces at least another year there for continuing treatment, including physical and mental therapy.
She is conscious and can speak pretty clearly and is getting better at regaining some motor skills. Today, for example, she moved the fingers on her left hand for the first time. She has only three fingers remaining as the other two were so badly damaged by the fire they had to be removed. Just before I got there Sherry had finished taking a walk around the Burn Center floor, aided by a physical therapist and a knee brace on her right leg. This is a daily routine now.
The pain she has experienced has been acute, not only physical but mental, and not only from the incident but from the many surgeries required. But she has improved enough to have her pain medication reduced.
Sherry hated the oxygen tube in her nose, and the staff made a deal with her. If she drank six units of Ensure a day, they would remove it. Ensure is a calcium-rich, milk-like product that promotes healthy bones. Her need for oxygen support was diminished by her physical improvement. She is eating better now as well.
Her next surgery, in a week, will be her next-to-last, it is hoped. It will involve taking some of her stomach muscle and grafting it to her left hand and elbow, where now there is bone exposed. Skin will not grow on bone, which needs muscle as an intermediate layer. Also, doctors will detach her right arm from her hip allowing the arm to further develop the donated hip skin. The final operation will be to reconstruct her facial structure where her attacker beat her with a brick.
Sherry’s mom, Patricia, is at her bedside most of the time, feeding, talking, coaching and lending support to her daughter. She and the rest of the Bean family have been seriously impacted by Sherry’s misfortune. It takes an hour and a half to drive from their home in Aberdeen to the hospital, through construction and congestion. So Patricia does not make it home every night, sometimes sleeping in the Burn Center lounge and other times returning to a nearby apartment, graciously offered to the Beans by a local church.
The very mild-mannered Mrs. Bean says that her outrage comes forward as she drives home late at night and thinks about the crime and the perpetrator. “Sometimes I think horrible thoughts,” she says, referring to what she’d like to do to the person responsible for Sherry’s fate.
This crime and the effect it has had on Sherry and her family shocked me to the point that I felt I needed to get involved. With other demands that needed attention, the Beans were not able to think much about the future. Sherry is so, so very lucky to be alive, and her will to live and fight through all the pain and discomfort is amazing. Of course, she will never be the same, but with prostheses and other support, she can continue to raise her now-6-year-old son, Travis, the best way she can. Sherry, 27, is a single mom. The expenses are, and will be, monumental for her recovery and maintenance.
My involvement has included establishing the Sherry Bean Fund, which has grown to about $2,500. I would hope readers would respond by sending Sherry a card and/or donating to the Fund. Cards go to Sherry Bean, Room 5404, UNC Jaycee Burn Center, 101 Manning Drive, Chapel Hill, N.C. 27514. Fund donations go to The Sherry Bean Fund, c/o RBC Centura Bank, Village Branch, P.O. Box 1809, Pinehurst, N.C. 28370.
Andy Thomas lives in Pinehurst. Reach him at dahtmuth58.com.
