Prosthetics and Orthotics, Oh My!

It's been a busy past several days and it looks like February (which is normally already crazy with meetings and trade shows) is going to be a little bit crazier.

We had noticed that Tucker wasn't quite acting himself the past couple days, but I really didn't think it was anything more than just maybe an upset tummy or something. Thursday Ben went down to bum around with Dad for the day and when he got back that afternoon, Tucker still wasn't feeling better so he called the Vet and took him in.

Tucker has Glaucoma, not anything us or the Vet saw coming. We all thought he had cataracts and we could either look into getting one removed in a couple months so he could see some or he could make it fine with them and would adjust to not being able to see. We had decided that sometime in Feb or March we would take him into the eye specialist, but now that this has very unexpectedly come up, Tucker will be going to the specialist in Louisville tomorrow (Friday) morning.

So, now we have 2 appointments in Louisville of Friday, Mallory's head scan and Tucker's eye appointment.

Since they weren't at similar times, or even close together, Ben took Tucker so he could be there by 9:30 eastern and then Mallory and I would head out so she could be to her appointment by 3:00 pm eastern.

Tucker's appointment was not as we had hoped. He will have to have his left eye removed and a prosthetic eye will go in it's place. They also checked the right eye, which also has glaucoma but can be maintained with meds from here on out, the pressures in that eye were not anywhere near as high as in the left one, which is apparently why that one has to be removed. His cataracts are also of the inherited kind, not old age variety, and there's nothing they can do to remove the cataract in his right eye so he can see. So we will be working with Tucker to help him get around as a blind dog for the rest of his furry life. He gets around the house well, it's just places he's not as used to that he has issues.

Tucker will have his eye removed on Tuesday in Louisville, so be thinking about Tucker on Tuesday.

Bean's appointment for her head scan went well. Nothing too crazy there, other than the thing they had to put on her head to do the scan, see below picture. She's so darn cute and looks like a mini Jedi Knight!




Thankfully with meds Tucker does feel better. They say until his left eye is removed it will still bother him some but you can tell he's much more like his normal self.

Mallory is just on the verge of crawling. She can go around in circles and is beginning to rock on her knees. Will not be long and we will be chasing her around and baby proofing everything!

We went down to Mom and Dad's on Saturday. Memaw came over, as well as Susan and Mom and Dad kept Bean while Ben and I went out to eat with our friend Greg, his girlfriend and their kiddos (7 year olds). Good time seeing them.

Sunday was back to Owensboro so Ben could pack up for his quick trip to Racine for his first day with Case. He flies out tonight (Sunday) has a half day of orientation, pees in a cup and then is back on a plane at 5:30 tomorrow evening and heads back. He will meet up with the current rep Tuesday at lunch to spend the rest of the week getting to meet his dealers.

Monday is our second trip to Physical Therapy for Mallory, Tuesday I'm off way to freaking early (4 am central) to get Tucker to Louisville by 7:30 eastern time for his surgery. It's going to be a crazy week.

Hopefully Tucker's surgery will go will with no major issues and he will be good to go.

And just so you know, Mallory gets her helmet on Feb 11th.

Perhaps instead of running for dimes I should have "driving to Louisville" and everyone can bet on how many times I have to go to Louisville between now and the walk, lol! I think I'm up to 3 so far this year and Ben is up to at least 3 as well...Feb will bring lots of two times per week for the first couple weeks.....woo hoo.

News from Ben & Will Winter Ever End???

I'm really tired of Winter, tired of snow, the cold doesn't even bother me that much, heck, 35 felt pretty toasty yesterday, but this snow, it's gotta go!!

I didn't even know snow was in the forecast, and I'm one of those who watches the news and weather everytime it's on, so minmally I see it at 6am, 6pm and 10pm (thanks to Dad, I must get that from him) but there was 0 mention of snow and then I saw the first flake last night around 6:30 or 7 and by this morning somewhere around 4-5 inches had piled up again. Ug. Another day trying to work from home.

I blame this on Lynn.

Lynn (for those of you who don't know him, friend of ours from North Dakota but now lives in White, South Dakota) brought all this cold crap with him down here. He has to be in Nashville for the next two weeks and stopped by this past weekend to stay with us before he had to show up in Nashville this past Sunday afternoon.

It was good to see Lynn, I really don't recall last time I saw him other than on Skype lately, so it's been a while. We had a nice time just relaxing, having a few drinks and just buming around. Ben took him to drool over guns at Whitakers....where he will always take anyone who might remotley like guns and you come to visit us.

Lynn headed out Sunday afternoon and Mom and Susan couldn't take anymore time without seeing Mallory, so both of them and Dad rode up Sunday afternoon for a little visit.

Monday brought some significant changes to us. We had keept it secret, but Ben turned in his resignation to Whayne on Monday. He has been offered his dream job to go back to work for Case, CNH, Case IH, whatever you want to call it, as the Service Rep (they have some other fancy name for it) here covering Kentucky and Southern Indiana. He will have essentially the same territory he was covering with Whayne, but now calling on the Case IH dealers in this area. So after about 8 years he finally gets to go back to work for Case. He officially starts on Monday Jan 31, but of course his cell phone will once again change. I will post when I know more, so Congrats to Ben!!!



Thankfully Whayne took it better than he expected, they didn't want him to leave but they understood.

We had Physical Therapy with Mallory on Monday afternoon. That went well, nothing to exciting to talk about, she already thought she was looking better in keeping her head held center instead of to one side.

Tuesday morning I had to go to Evansville to pick up Ben because he turned in his truck, phone, computer, etc, so I had to bring him back. We were supposed to go to Louisville on Tuesday to get Mallory's head scan measurements for her helmet but they called yesterday morning and said the scanner was down and we've rescheduled for Friday.

And now it's Wednesday and there's 4 inches of snow on the ground. I'm really thinking those $59 flights to Orlando out of Owensboro are looking pretty good right now.....

Thinking warm thoughts.....here's a couple pictures of Bean:

Weekend with the Grandparents

I haven't gotten to update about this past weekend when Ben's parents came to town.

It was a pretty low key weekend, the boys went to see True Grit and we went Krogering : ) We did take some good pictures though and that's the fun part!!

Before the pictures, I'll give a quick Helmet update, they called and said our insurance would cover the helmet, yeah! Catch, we have a $3K deductible that we haven't met yet, booo. So, it goes towards our deductible but we basically still have to pay for it. Fun Fun. Poor Tucker's cataract surgery will just have to get pushed back a little longer : (

We now go back this coming Tuesday for the scan and at that point they will order the Helmet and we will have it in a couple weeks.

Looking forward to Lynn coming into town this weekend. Not real thrilled with the 4 inches of snow outside my door right now, but I am determined to finally put Bean in her snow suit and go outside and take some pictures of her in the snow!

VIdeo Post!! Bean feeding herself!!

Just a quickly video post, we took this tonight and I had to share. I'll do a more thorough update tomorrow night with pictures from the weekend then.

Helmet Fitting: Day 1

We got up earlier than I like so we could be in Louisville by 10 am Eastern for her first helmet fitting. It's considered an orthotic, so we saw the dr at another one of the umpteen Norton's buildings.

They were very nice there, gave me some tips on how to fill everything out so it would best be considered by the insurance to cover.

They really didn't do much more today than what Charity our PT measured, but he turns all that into the insurance and then we wait to see if it's covered. We will get it regardless, but then we go back for a scan and that's what the helmet is built from.

Then it will take a week or two to come in and we will go back and then go back every two weeks for adjustments. We will be in Louisville a lot over the next several months.

He showed us what they look like, of course the one he had was camo, but much to Bens dismay we will not be getting that one! He said the have ones with flowers or butterflies, I'm sure that is more our speed.

When I got home tonight there was already a message from them saying they had heard back from our insurance. Don't know why they didn't call my cell, but sounds like we will have our scan soon.

Here's the brochure about the helmet we will be getting: http://www.orthomerica.com/pdf/clinical.pdf


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Finally got to the Neuro today, and the verdict is:

We will have a 9 month old football player....in other words, they want her to have a helmet.

I've come to terms with this. It's harder on mommies than on the babies. They get used to it after a day or so and could then care less. She said we will probably have to have her in it for 2-3 months, 23 hours a day. But, it's kinda like braces, could be a shorter time, could be a little longer.

Brain/developmentally she's fine, it's really just cosmetic but at the same time we've noticed that her ears don't line up exactly across from one another and it's because of the way her head is growing and the helmet will fix that. I really don't want her sun glasses to not fit in the future!!

They were hoping to send us across the street today to get measured for it but they couldn't fit us in, so back we go on Tuesday : ) Then it takes about a week to a week and a half to get it in.

Here's a website/blog that talks a little more about flat spots/helmets: http://www.kidisplints.com/ with some pictures of what they look like. Some are clear, or white, I've seen some in colors, no doubt we will "decorate" it for her!

It's good she's getting it now while it's cold out that way she shouldn't have to sweat in it.

The neurologist office was right across the street from Norton's, you actually park in the same garage and go across the catwalk, so after the appointment we went over to Norton's to see if we could see any of the nurses on 3C or in the Intermediate Nursery.

The RN that I liked so well, the one that made rounds with the doctors everyday was there and she was excited to see us. She took a picture of Mallory with her iphone so she could show Elizabeth, Beth and some of the other nurses we got to know so well. Dr How was making rounds too so we got to see her which I was happy about. She was like, we were just talking about you earlier today, guess my 7 weeks stay made quite an impression....I can imagine it goes something like this...."you've only been in here for 3 days, we had this one patient who was here for 7 weeks so don't feel so sorry for yourself," lol!

We then made our way down to the intermediate nursery, there were only 2 nurses there that we knew and they weren't 2 that I was as familiar with and can't for the life of me remember their names, Paula, Barb, Margot and some of the others weren't there today. So, I wish I could have seen more of them but maybe when they have their homecomming in the summer.

After making our rounds, Mallory sucked down a bottle in the parking lot at the hospital and then we made our way to the mall : )

I like Oxmoor Mall because it's not as crazy as St Matthews and had all the stores I needed to go to. We made our first stop at California Pizza Kitchen so I could have my most favorite salad of all times and then went into the mall. I had goals, makeup at Sephora and Snow Leopard at the Apple store and I accomplished both.

Then we made a trek to Babies R Us right down the road. I wanted to get Bean a jumper thingy because she has outgrown her swing (she now sits up enough that she can grab the little leaves and birds on the mobile, I think that's a sign she's too big now) so I wanted something else but I wanted it to be different than the exercauscers at Mom and Mrs Carole's, so I got this....and it's farm themed!! Wasn't bad to put together and she seems to really like it. Here's a video of her jumping in it once I got it put together:



Ben's parents are headed here for the weekend tomorrow morning. I've got to squeeze some runs in tonight and Sunday and then I will play around with my updated imovie and iphoto and the app store on the mac now that I have the right software updates!

Here's a few other pictures of Mallory....note the one where she is sucking her big toe, tonight she would take a bite of baby food and then chase it with a suck of her big toe! So her toes ended up with baby food on them too!!

January 13th ~ Mixed Emotions

January 13th is mixed emotions for me.

It's my friend's from college Jake and Brian's birthday's, but 2 years ago today Grandaddy passed away and 15 years ago today we lost Richard, a friend from High School.

But, I don't want to dwell in the past, but here's a few pictures I dug up of Grandaddy, so we can celebrate him!






On a happier note, we've had a busy but good week. We got snow Tuesday am early so Ben and I just worked from home, or best we could with having Mallory too! We would take turns making work calls while the other kept Mallory occupied! Not the way I would want to try to work everyday!

Wednesday was back to normal and tomorrow we are off to Louisville for the appointment with the Neurologist at 10:30. It's not calling for snow, so hopefully there should be no issues getting to Louisville this time!

Otherwise it hasn't been a very eventful week. Week 3 of 1/2 marathon training for me and more normal stuff that isn't worth mentioning otherwise! We did get Mallory's Grow and Go chair out so she could really utilze it, and she really likes it, I've got a picture of her below in it. Really cool chair. It had basically been sitting under the Christmas tree since Christmas, and yes the tree is still up but all the ornaments are off!! I'm making progress!!

Here's a few pictures of Bean from this week:

No Neuro Appointment....

Well, we had all intentions on getting to Louisville Friday morning, but once again, Mother Nature had other plans.

I knew they were calling for some light snow but they were only calling for 1/2 an inch, I wasn't too worried about 1/2 an inch. Typically the worst part is the 1.5 miles from our house to Hwy 231, if I can get to 231 it shouldn't be a big deal.

Ben had work stuff already planned so he hadn't planned on going with us and I really didn't think it was necessary. I was looking forward to doing a little shopping after our appointment.

The roads were fine until we were about 5 miles outsife of Leitchfield, KY, about 1/2 way to Louisville. It didn't look like they had pre-treated the parkway there and now the wind was blowing what little snow we had all over the road again. I didn't think it was too bad until I saw that a SUV had just slipped and flipped about 2 minutes earlier and as everyone was veering to the far lane to avoid it we all started sliding as well.

I'm glad I have anti-lock brakes but I'd prefer to not ever have to have them engage. Either way, me and several semi's slid our way down the big hill towards the Leitchfield exit where I decided I'd had enough scary and hazardous driving conditions for the morning and I pulled off and went to the gas station.

I called the Neurologist office, told them the roads were bad here and that I couldn't get there by 10:30 could we push it back or just change it all together. We just moved it to this coming Friday now....and as it stands at the moment, it's not calling for snow : )

We sat in Leitchfield for over an hour. I didn't want to head back out on the road until I was sure they were in better shape. I was pretty appalled to begin with that they were so bad for such a small amount of snow.

Saturday morning we had our #2 Swimming Lesson at the YMCA. One of the other babies was there as well this time. She was 18 months old and wasn't a big fan of the water. Mallory just loved it and it was obvious this little girl didn't but she finally warmed up by the end of the lesson but she was still not as relaxed as Mallory. Mallory's only problem this lesson was that she was trying to drink the water....

We then came back home and got ready to head to Elkton for Zaylei's 4th birthday party. Full on Princess Party including Castle Jumper in the Activity Building of the Church. It was fun and Mallory got to go to her 1st Birthday Party!!

By the time we got back to Utica it was almost 7 pm and I was not in the mood to squeeze in my training run, I wanted wine. So, I opted for wine on Saturday night but did get in my 3 miles on the Treadmill on Sunday.

I'm not sure if I've mentioned it here on the blog, but I'm working on scanning in all of Dad's slides and photo's from his time in Vietnam. I've got a nifty device that does a good job of turning slides into digital prints, my flat bed scanner for bigger documents and some of dad's album's where the pictures aren't easily removed and then this cool little photo scanner that quickly scans photos up to 5X7 and puts them on an SD card. It's super quick and works great. I'm almost done with all of dad's photo albums, have moved onto scanning in his friend Doug's, who was on tour with him, and will soon plug them all into iMovie and make a DVD Movie of their time in Vietnam with all the great music of that era. I'm really excited and can't wait to finish it up!!

I also finished our 2010 Book on Shutterfly....aka my version of Scrapbooking. I'll probably do a video as well, but that doesn't take as long to do as the book so I wanted to get that done. If you want to see it, you can click on the side link for Mallory's shutterfly page. I should have mine in the mail in about a week.

Don't have many pictures from just the past couple days, but here's a few:

9 Months Old

Itty Bitty is 9 Months Old, yesterday!! Crazy!

She had her Doctor's appointment today for her 9 month checkup.

All is well, she's 17 pounds 6 ounces and is 28 inches long now! That's 25% for her weight and 55% for her height, tall and skinny, wonder where that came from, LOL!

No shots today, just a toe prick to check to see if she is anemic or not, and she isn't. We then had to head to get head xrays for her Neurologist appointment tomorrow in Louisville, they got us in quick!

They did say that her skull has NOT fused together yet, which is good and normal at this point, so I'm hoping tomorrow's appointment with the neurologist doesn't call for a helmet, maybe just a follow up in a few months, but who knows.

After our Doctor's appointment we are going to hit up the Apple Store and Sephora!!

I'll let you know how tomorrow goes!!

Here's my cutie patootie in the morning.....peeking over her crib saying get up and get me some breakfast mom!

Happy 2011!!

The new year has arrived, and much to Ben's dismay, we celebrated at home.....in bed asleep! I was still getting over my crud and just didn't feel like going out and about. We grilled at steak, bought champagne that we failed to open, half watched a few movies and went to bed at 11 pm. Exciting stuff but more than fine with me.

New Year's Day was fairly unevenful as well. I had, and still have, a list a mile long of crap I need to get done at the house. Thankfully laundry did finally get finished....the tree is still up though.

To celebrate in, as I have now found out, traditional Southern style, had black eyed peas with dinner. We weren't planning on doing the full out southern meal or a hopping john for dinner, just going to have black eyed peas as a side so we could say we ate our good luck peas. Only probably was that Philly Cheese steaks were on the menu for Saturday night! So we had Philly Cheese steaks, black eyed peas and champagne. Yeah, we are weird. The champagne was really yummy thought and we had the whole bottle!



Here's a picture of Mallory of New Year's Day!!


Ben had an itch to go shoot his new gun which pretty much meant we had to head to Elkton. Ben is now the proud owner of a used glock that was formerly owned by the Detroit Police Department, lol. Wonder how many people it was shot at.....it even says Detroit PD on the side of it. So funny......and kinda ghetto. Either way, we went to mom and dad's, swapped out the rest of our Christmas presents with the family that didn't trek up here on Christmas night and Ben got to go shoot crap with Dad and Nick. He also cleaned up Dad's AR 15 or whatever it's called, so they headed off to the back of the farm to shoot at crap. Boys.

Mallory and I napped : )

Today was hard to get up and get going. Ben actually had the day off today for New Year's instead of Friday, which I thought was odd, but whatever. We had Mallory's Physical Therapy Evaluation today for her Tortocollus, I'm sure I slaughtered the spelling of that, but basically it's "stiff neck." Basically she just went through some stretches to do with her and her neck so she will have a better range of motion. She's always favored one side and this just helps even her out. We will probably go once a week for a couple months and she should be good to go. I also like that fact that the Physical Therapist, Charity, is also in Junior League with me : )

We are also going to go on and get referred to the neurologist. Just to take a look at her flat spot. She measured right on the edge of whether they would recommend we go or not and we would rather err on the safe side and just have her flat spot checked out. I know it's getting better and that's a good sign but since my degree is not in neurology, obviously, I'd rather go make sure they think everything will continue to get better and be symmetric. Worst case is she does get a helmet for a couple months but I really don't think it will come to that, but who knows.

Otherwise all is well with us. We are all feeling better. Mallory has a little bit of a runny nose, but doesn't seem to be bad. She's still teething like mad and gnawing on anything and everything she can get her hands on. Maybe one day a couple of teeth will pop out!!

Half Marathon Training and Running for Dimes is progressing along well. I'm up to having sponsorship for 17 dimes per mile. My goal is 50. If you would like to sponsor me and to learn more about it, check out my running blog here. I've suckered a few others into doing this with me too!! We are the crazy preemie mommas!

Here's another picture or two: