Quick post to say I will be posting all about A's b-day soon! I wanna get all her pics uploaded and perfect!
It will be a long one! Ha!
Monday, June 18, 2012
Saturday, June 16, 2012
Party Anxiety! :-/
We've been going non-stop all day today (Friday) to prep for Aubrey's
B-day party. Her actual birthday is Sunday the 17th, but we wanted it to be not "mashed" with Father's Day.
I always plan waaaay too much stuff to get finished in one day, but my OCD tendencies seem to take over and once again we are up at 2am still planning. Ha! I will give myself a little leeway this year though, because this is the first year we are having the party at our house. This makes me a nervous wreck! :-/ I know it's not true, but I always feel I am judged by my house. My decor, cleanliness, organization & worst of all how it will look when 50 people pass through on my white carpet! Haha! I love out families and know they just want to spend time with Aubrey, but Mommy may have a morning cocktail to calm down! Lol!
On the upside to this, as of now my house hasn't been cleaner since the day we moved in & it's more organized than ever! ;-)
I'll let ya know if I make it through tomorrow!
B-day party. Her actual birthday is Sunday the 17th, but we wanted it to be not "mashed" with Father's Day.
I always plan waaaay too much stuff to get finished in one day, but my OCD tendencies seem to take over and once again we are up at 2am still planning. Ha! I will give myself a little leeway this year though, because this is the first year we are having the party at our house. This makes me a nervous wreck! :-/ I know it's not true, but I always feel I am judged by my house. My decor, cleanliness, organization & worst of all how it will look when 50 people pass through on my white carpet! Haha! I love out families and know they just want to spend time with Aubrey, but Mommy may have a morning cocktail to calm down! Lol!
On the upside to this, as of now my house hasn't been cleaner since the day we moved in & it's more organized than ever! ;-)
I'll let ya know if I make it through tomorrow!
Thursday, June 14, 2012
Cardinals Wreath!
Go Cards!!
Aubrey Update
Aubrey had her follow-up appt today with her pediatrician, Dr. Olson.he said everything looks look and to just continue giving her Tylenol PRN for the pain.
I told him I was a little more concerned because she has been overly sleepy today (slept 13 hours last night, & within an hour was complaining of being sleepy) not to mention all she did all morning was lay around in my bed. No tv or other activity. Just laid there. Not that I mind the snuggles, but we usually watch a movie or something together. He said she is still recovering from the concussion and that extra sleep is pretty normal. We just need to continue to watch for vomiting or other strange things.
Next appointments:
3 year well baby next Thursday
Follow-up with Neurosurgery & ENT next Friday.
:-)
I told him I was a little more concerned because she has been overly sleepy today (slept 13 hours last night, & within an hour was complaining of being sleepy) not to mention all she did all morning was lay around in my bed. No tv or other activity. Just laid there. Not that I mind the snuggles, but we usually watch a movie or something together. He said she is still recovering from the concussion and that extra sleep is pretty normal. We just need to continue to watch for vomiting or other strange things.
Next appointments:
3 year well baby next Thursday
Follow-up with Neurosurgery & ENT next Friday.
:-)
Tuesday, June 12, 2012
Living Nightmare
*Warning post overload*
This is going to be a very long & detailed story.
Start Sunday afternoon, Aubrey and I were going to Walmart to grab a few groceries before I had to be at softball and volleyball practice that evening. In normal fashion, Aubrey said she wanted to walk, not be put in the cart. So I started to let her just walk along the cart, but did I mention this is SEMisouri & Walmart on a Sunday afternoon. (I'm tellin you, the crazies flock there on the weekend, because they think there is nothing better to do than hang out at the grocery store.) Anyway, I made a Mommy call, I decided to not let someone run her over, and I put her in the seat, and strapped her in. She was not happy, so to ease the situation, I offered to go get a free cookie in the bakery. I grabbed a few items on the way back to the bakery. We got back there, and I asked if she could have a cookie, they grabbed for her cookie. As I turned around to tell her to tell them thank you, I saw her standing in the "child seat" of the shopping cart. I'm not sure if the latch just wasn't completely attached of if she just undid it, wouldn't be the first time. As I reached for her she attempted to sit down but lost her balance. In a half a second, she fell. Straight back. I reached for her and barely grazed her leg. There was nothing I could do, and before I knew it she hit the floor. Flat on her back & the back of her head. She's so little & fell with such force that she actually kind of bounced and hit again. I guess I must have screamed, because people started to flock over. She never lost conciousness, but let out blood curtling screams. Without even thinking, I grabbed her, picked her up and tried to comfort her. Now I know, with all my medical training, I know better. You NEVER NEVER NEVER move a perosn with a possible spinal injury, but that never even flickered in my head. (Just to ease my guilt of grabbing her, every doctor and nurse we came in contact with, said that would've done the same thing. Mommy panic mode overrides any and all medical training no matter how extensive.) I yelled to the lady, we needed to go to the hospital, and she said she would get a manager (WTH?!?!), he came over and I said again, we needed to go to the hospital. He was obviously not going to call 911, so I grabbed the bag of ice he brought me, and ran. I tried to calm her, but nothing was helping. I strapped her in her carseat, and drove like hell to get to the ER. I normally agree with people kind of blocking crazy drivers when they are being morons trying to pass, but I had turned my hazard lights on and was driving calm, just faster. I got stuck behind some older lady, the man driving on the other side of me "blocked me" from passing him or her. I started honking and flashing my lights and he flipped me off. (WTH?!?!) So I just backed off for a sec, then when he backed off, I took advantage of my V8 engine, and passed. LOL!. I didn't care about anything at that time, except making sure my baby was okay. I arrived at Southeast (where her records are, which is why I went there. Plus, my medical director from EMS is an ER physician there, who is Board Certified in Peds & I was hoping she was there.) They immediately put a C-collar on her and strapped her to a pediatric backboard. She was not at all happy with this, so of course she was screaming for me which caused me to have a meltdown right there. They rushed her back to a room, and the Doctor came right in determined we needed X-rays and a possible CT. She said she wasn't sure if a CT was necessary, but wanted to x-ray first. They try to avoid doing CT's as much as possible because there have been new studies that show the chance of some forms of cancer go from 1 in 10,000 to 1 in 100 after the radiation of a CT. I was not happy about the idea of a CT at all, but if it was absolutely necessary we would comply. The x-rays showed a possible cervical issue, so the doc was highly considering the CT, but then the worst thing ever happened. Aubrey closed her eyes. Nothing we could do would arouse her. The doc and several nurses came running in. They said this was not good. They tried yelling, tickeling, painful stimuli. NOTHING worked. She was still breathing & her heart rate was fine, but she was completely unresponsive. The next 30 min are pretty much a blur, but I remember all of us, running down the hall pushing her bed to CT. The doctor was afraid she had a brain bleed and the swelling was getting to bad. I knew the in the CT room, so he let me see her scans. THANK GOD, there was no bleeding. I could tell there was a significant amount of swelling and could see the large hematoma on the back of her skull. I rushed back downstairs with them. The doc came in and confirmed what I had seen, no bleeding, but swelling. She also said that she was having a radiologist look and the scans. She came back in a few minutes later and said that there was a significant skull fracture on the occipital bone that was very concerning, so she was having a neurosurgeon and Barne's Children's in St. Louis look at them. She came in, just as Aubrey was "waking up" from what they could only determine as a comatose state, because of the swelling. It was like a safety mechanism her body did, to allow the swelling to go down without damaging the brain. Dr. Weber said she just didn't feel comfortable treating her down here, so they would like to transfer her to Children's for the neurosurgeon to better eval her. My heart sunk, but I also appreciated her concern for my baby girl. They decided they wanted to Airlift her there, but then found out the winds were to strong for safe flying conditions, so by ambulance it was. They called CCPA to come do the transfer. I was happy it was them, because I know almost all of them from doing clinicals there, and trust them. I know there policy is to not let family ride along, due to the fact that if something goes wrong, I'm just a distraught mom getting in the way, so we followed very close directly behind them. Aubrey did amazing, I'm sooooo proud of her. She could see through the back window and see our car, she kept waving at us. I gave her my cell phone to watch Netflix on so she would be more comfortable. (I owe Shae & Chris at CCPA and big thank you for helping calm my mommy nerves!)
Once we arrived at Children's they had us stop in the ER for another eval by the ER supervisor, who's husband happend to be Aubrey's neurosurgeon. He was wonderful also, but did advise us that she had a 2nd skull fracture that went along the mastoid bone, but also crossed onto the temporal bone. It was just above the ear so he was concerned and wanted her to see a pediatric Otolarynologist (ENT) while we were there. They admitted her to the neuro floor and we got to our room around 2am. Of course another set of nurses and doc's had to come see her before she could go to sleep. She also needed to eat, because it had been since about 2pm that she had ate. (We were getting dinner at the store when this all happened.) So after she ate, and we finally got to lay down, it was about 3am. She instantly fell asleep, but I was so wired from all the adrenaline, it took me a min. I was suddenly awoken at 3:30, (so about 15 min after I fell asleep!) to the sight of what seemed to be a 12 y/o who introduced himself as Doctor. I was so out of it, I almost laughed out loud. He was the on-call ENT resident. (*Disclaimer* I realize that everyone has to learn & that I will be in his shoes, not too long from now, but this guy was RIDICULOUS!!) I'm not sure who ever thought it was ok to ask an almost 3 y/o, after suffering a head injury, not eating for 12 hours, and not sleeping at all, to comply with a full ENT exam at 3:30 in the morning was a good idea, but apparently he did. After I sleepily re-told the story again to him, he stated he needed to check her out. He proceeded to look in her ears (her least favorite thing), which is what woke her up, then her eyes and nose. Finally he wanted to look in her mouth. Bad idea. He wasn't the most gentle doc either. Obviously Peds is not his calling. He stuck the tounge depressor she fall back, while already being upset, it gagged her. She threw up, all over him. LOL! Well deserved! The nurse we had (LOVE HER!!) came in and politely kicked him out. haha! She apologized over and over about him even coming in. So back to sleep we went, for now. They were back to check her vital around 4. Then 2 more ENT residents came in at 6. Vitals at 6:30. Neuro at 7:30. Vitals at 8. Then the wake up for her appt in the ENT clinic at 8:30. Not to mention we had to share a room with a 6 weeks old baby who was having seizures and whose monitors went off every 10 min or so, alerting the nursing staff to rush in and turn on all the lights. Total added up amount of sleep: about 2 hours..maybe... They had to clean the excess wax out of her ears to verify that there was no damage to the eardrum itself and that no fluids were leaking out. They did see a small bruise and some speckled blood on the drum itself, but it was fully intact and no damage, so they cleared her. We headed back upstairs and ordered food. The neuro team came back in for one more exam and said that she was acting in the best manner possible and they were very impressed with her energy. She was allowed to go down to the Child Life playroom for awhile and when we returned to her room they informed us she was cleared by neuro and going to be discharged. We only have to be very cautious about her "bumping" her head of having any abnormal headaches, nausea, of vomitting. Other than that, she is perfectly safe to run around like a normal pre-schooler. Although, I have been treating her like a newborn that needs to be wrapped in bubble wrap.
I am so thankful that God was watching out for my little girl and the fractures and concusion are all she sustained. I am so grateful to the doctors, nurses and medical staff from Southeast Hospital, Cape County Private Ambulance and of course Barnes-Jewish Children's Hospital. We are blessed that such wonderful people took such good care of our baby. We have several follow-up appointment in the near future, and will not be playing hard for the next 3 months (that's how long it will take to fully heal) but we will try to go on with life as normal and enjoy our summer.
Thank you all for your thoughts and prayers while we were literally living in a nightmare.
This is going to be a very long & detailed story.
Start Sunday afternoon, Aubrey and I were going to Walmart to grab a few groceries before I had to be at softball and volleyball practice that evening. In normal fashion, Aubrey said she wanted to walk, not be put in the cart. So I started to let her just walk along the cart, but did I mention this is SEMisouri & Walmart on a Sunday afternoon. (I'm tellin you, the crazies flock there on the weekend, because they think there is nothing better to do than hang out at the grocery store.) Anyway, I made a Mommy call, I decided to not let someone run her over, and I put her in the seat, and strapped her in. She was not happy, so to ease the situation, I offered to go get a free cookie in the bakery. I grabbed a few items on the way back to the bakery. We got back there, and I asked if she could have a cookie, they grabbed for her cookie. As I turned around to tell her to tell them thank you, I saw her standing in the "child seat" of the shopping cart. I'm not sure if the latch just wasn't completely attached of if she just undid it, wouldn't be the first time. As I reached for her she attempted to sit down but lost her balance. In a half a second, she fell. Straight back. I reached for her and barely grazed her leg. There was nothing I could do, and before I knew it she hit the floor. Flat on her back & the back of her head. She's so little & fell with such force that she actually kind of bounced and hit again. I guess I must have screamed, because people started to flock over. She never lost conciousness, but let out blood curtling screams. Without even thinking, I grabbed her, picked her up and tried to comfort her. Now I know, with all my medical training, I know better. You NEVER NEVER NEVER move a perosn with a possible spinal injury, but that never even flickered in my head. (Just to ease my guilt of grabbing her, every doctor and nurse we came in contact with, said that would've done the same thing. Mommy panic mode overrides any and all medical training no matter how extensive.) I yelled to the lady, we needed to go to the hospital, and she said she would get a manager (WTH?!?!), he came over and I said again, we needed to go to the hospital. He was obviously not going to call 911, so I grabbed the bag of ice he brought me, and ran. I tried to calm her, but nothing was helping. I strapped her in her carseat, and drove like hell to get to the ER. I normally agree with people kind of blocking crazy drivers when they are being morons trying to pass, but I had turned my hazard lights on and was driving calm, just faster. I got stuck behind some older lady, the man driving on the other side of me "blocked me" from passing him or her. I started honking and flashing my lights and he flipped me off. (WTH?!?!) So I just backed off for a sec, then when he backed off, I took advantage of my V8 engine, and passed. LOL!. I didn't care about anything at that time, except making sure my baby was okay. I arrived at Southeast (where her records are, which is why I went there. Plus, my medical director from EMS is an ER physician there, who is Board Certified in Peds & I was hoping she was there.) They immediately put a C-collar on her and strapped her to a pediatric backboard. She was not at all happy with this, so of course she was screaming for me which caused me to have a meltdown right there. They rushed her back to a room, and the Doctor came right in determined we needed X-rays and a possible CT. She said she wasn't sure if a CT was necessary, but wanted to x-ray first. They try to avoid doing CT's as much as possible because there have been new studies that show the chance of some forms of cancer go from 1 in 10,000 to 1 in 100 after the radiation of a CT. I was not happy about the idea of a CT at all, but if it was absolutely necessary we would comply. The x-rays showed a possible cervical issue, so the doc was highly considering the CT, but then the worst thing ever happened. Aubrey closed her eyes. Nothing we could do would arouse her. The doc and several nurses came running in. They said this was not good. They tried yelling, tickeling, painful stimuli. NOTHING worked. She was still breathing & her heart rate was fine, but she was completely unresponsive. The next 30 min are pretty much a blur, but I remember all of us, running down the hall pushing her bed to CT. The doctor was afraid she had a brain bleed and the swelling was getting to bad. I knew the in the CT room, so he let me see her scans. THANK GOD, there was no bleeding. I could tell there was a significant amount of swelling and could see the large hematoma on the back of her skull. I rushed back downstairs with them. The doc came in and confirmed what I had seen, no bleeding, but swelling. She also said that she was having a radiologist look and the scans. She came back in a few minutes later and said that there was a significant skull fracture on the occipital bone that was very concerning, so she was having a neurosurgeon and Barne's Children's in St. Louis look at them. She came in, just as Aubrey was "waking up" from what they could only determine as a comatose state, because of the swelling. It was like a safety mechanism her body did, to allow the swelling to go down without damaging the brain. Dr. Weber said she just didn't feel comfortable treating her down here, so they would like to transfer her to Children's for the neurosurgeon to better eval her. My heart sunk, but I also appreciated her concern for my baby girl. They decided they wanted to Airlift her there, but then found out the winds were to strong for safe flying conditions, so by ambulance it was. They called CCPA to come do the transfer. I was happy it was them, because I know almost all of them from doing clinicals there, and trust them. I know there policy is to not let family ride along, due to the fact that if something goes wrong, I'm just a distraught mom getting in the way, so we followed very close directly behind them. Aubrey did amazing, I'm sooooo proud of her. She could see through the back window and see our car, she kept waving at us. I gave her my cell phone to watch Netflix on so she would be more comfortable. (I owe Shae & Chris at CCPA and big thank you for helping calm my mommy nerves!)
Once we arrived at Children's they had us stop in the ER for another eval by the ER supervisor, who's husband happend to be Aubrey's neurosurgeon. He was wonderful also, but did advise us that she had a 2nd skull fracture that went along the mastoid bone, but also crossed onto the temporal bone. It was just above the ear so he was concerned and wanted her to see a pediatric Otolarynologist (ENT) while we were there. They admitted her to the neuro floor and we got to our room around 2am. Of course another set of nurses and doc's had to come see her before she could go to sleep. She also needed to eat, because it had been since about 2pm that she had ate. (We were getting dinner at the store when this all happened.) So after she ate, and we finally got to lay down, it was about 3am. She instantly fell asleep, but I was so wired from all the adrenaline, it took me a min. I was suddenly awoken at 3:30, (so about 15 min after I fell asleep!) to the sight of what seemed to be a 12 y/o who introduced himself as Doctor. I was so out of it, I almost laughed out loud. He was the on-call ENT resident. (*Disclaimer* I realize that everyone has to learn & that I will be in his shoes, not too long from now, but this guy was RIDICULOUS!!) I'm not sure who ever thought it was ok to ask an almost 3 y/o, after suffering a head injury, not eating for 12 hours, and not sleeping at all, to comply with a full ENT exam at 3:30 in the morning was a good idea, but apparently he did. After I sleepily re-told the story again to him, he stated he needed to check her out. He proceeded to look in her ears (her least favorite thing), which is what woke her up, then her eyes and nose. Finally he wanted to look in her mouth. Bad idea. He wasn't the most gentle doc either. Obviously Peds is not his calling. He stuck the tounge depressor she fall back, while already being upset, it gagged her. She threw up, all over him. LOL! Well deserved! The nurse we had (LOVE HER!!) came in and politely kicked him out. haha! She apologized over and over about him even coming in. So back to sleep we went, for now. They were back to check her vital around 4. Then 2 more ENT residents came in at 6. Vitals at 6:30. Neuro at 7:30. Vitals at 8. Then the wake up for her appt in the ENT clinic at 8:30. Not to mention we had to share a room with a 6 weeks old baby who was having seizures and whose monitors went off every 10 min or so, alerting the nursing staff to rush in and turn on all the lights. Total added up amount of sleep: about 2 hours..maybe... They had to clean the excess wax out of her ears to verify that there was no damage to the eardrum itself and that no fluids were leaking out. They did see a small bruise and some speckled blood on the drum itself, but it was fully intact and no damage, so they cleared her. We headed back upstairs and ordered food. The neuro team came back in for one more exam and said that she was acting in the best manner possible and they were very impressed with her energy. She was allowed to go down to the Child Life playroom for awhile and when we returned to her room they informed us she was cleared by neuro and going to be discharged. We only have to be very cautious about her "bumping" her head of having any abnormal headaches, nausea, of vomitting. Other than that, she is perfectly safe to run around like a normal pre-schooler. Although, I have been treating her like a newborn that needs to be wrapped in bubble wrap.
I am so thankful that God was watching out for my little girl and the fractures and concusion are all she sustained. I am so grateful to the doctors, nurses and medical staff from Southeast Hospital, Cape County Private Ambulance and of course Barnes-Jewish Children's Hospital. We are blessed that such wonderful people took such good care of our baby. We have several follow-up appointment in the near future, and will not be playing hard for the next 3 months (that's how long it will take to fully heal) but we will try to go on with life as normal and enjoy our summer.
Thank you all for your thoughts and prayers while we were literally living in a nightmare.
Vaca Post..... FAIL!
I don't know why I ever attempt to "promise" to post, I know I won't...LOL!
Anyway, vaca was fun & fast. We had a good time catching up with family and got to play at 6 flags in Arlington for 2 days. Rode some wicked roller coaters and had a blast with A in the water park. Aubrey did get sick in the car one VERY HOORIFIC time, so that made for an interesting pitstop of cleahing.. :-/ but over all we had a great time. :-)
Anyway, vaca was fun & fast. We had a good time catching up with family and got to play at 6 flags in Arlington for 2 days. Rode some wicked roller coaters and had a blast with A in the water park. Aubrey did get sick in the car one VERY HOORIFIC time, so that made for an interesting pitstop of cleahing.. :-/ but over all we had a great time. :-)
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