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: