laylee's post surgical appointment!

okay guys, so layee had her post surgery appointment yesterday and had her small bandaging removed. her incisions look great. you can hardly see them at all now. you can still see a good bit of the shunts tubing throughout her body, but as i had mentioned before.. we are hoping she will grow out of it. Dr. Grabb says her head size hasn't shrunk (which is surprising because it appears smaller) but it hasn't grown any larger either which is great news! she is scheduled for another CT scan in two weeks to see how much fluid has drained and make sure the shunt is working properly. she has been given permission to go back to PT, so we are going to schedule her in to continue working on her muscle development. she will also resume speech therapy very soon. here are a few images i have posted for y'all of her healing incisions and the tubing..

you can see the shunt really well here. it's quite prominent out of her head. 

here's the first incision... if you can even spot it.

happy laylee and Nana

here's her abdominal incision. it is healed very nicely. once again, right above it going all the way up her chest.. the tubing is VERY prominent

here's the second incision on the back right side of her head. this seems to be the one that has the hardest time healing.. probably because she has spent allot of time on the back of her head since the surgery. 

laylee, getting a smoochy from Nana.

these are some gorgeous flowers that Tyler brought home for me yesterday after i got out of school. things have been really difficult for us with work, school and having baby laylee to make time for each other. so he decided he was going to make the romance happen. he surprised me with these roses and took the whole family out to an amazing dinner at red lobster where i ate some of the best Parmesan tilapia i have ever had. after which we came home and watched a movie together as a family. it was so awesome to get to spend time with every one. gave me a little break from school too. 

to update on school, i am in mod D; which covers CPR certification, EKG testing, and the cardiovascular system. I am so excited because we get to dissect a heart in two weeks! i am so looking forward to slicing one up.. it is going to be an amazing experience! and i WILL be posting pictures and videos here as soon as i can!. For those of you who don't know, i got a 4.0 in my second modular! so that's two mods in a row i have maintained a 4.0 GPA! i am so proud of myself for working as hard as i have been. i LOVE what i am doing and am surprised at how passionate i have become about the human body and everything we are capable of. We have a new professor this mod. his name is Mr. Ken and he seems to be a truly amazing instructor. He is very strict, but thorough.. and I'm loving that, because i am such a detail oriented person. there is a lot to be covered in this month of college, so i won't be updating the blog as much as I'd like to; i promise to keep it updated with the most important and pertinent information. 

thanks so much for keeping up with the Olsen fam guys!!! we love all of you!

laylee's recovery.

so laylee is recovering nicely from her ventriculoperitoneal (v.p.) shunt placement surgery she had friday. she has been much happier. here are a few pictures of her insicions and how well they are healing!

a sleepy laylee

this is the initial incision that was made in the top of her head

 this incision was the first one made. they cut through the top of her head, drilled a small hole into her skull and made a small hole into the protective layer covering the brain and placed the top of the shunt just above her brain.

incision number two out of three..

 incision number two was made here, in the upper right back end of her skull. it was made to help feed the tubing down her neck and over her collar bone and finally into her peritoneum (the bottom of her stomach).

incision number three..

 this is the third and final incision that was made. the purpouse of this incision was to feed the tube through to laylees stomach and place it where it could drain out and be processed and peed out like any other fluid.

laylee pulling funny face!

happy little girl

 if you look closely, you can see the tubing protruding a little right where my finger is. you can feel it in both her head, neck and just above her tummy incision. the prognoses on that is that as she grows, the tubing will not be noticable. we are hoping she continues to make a full recovery. i will keep updates posted here as often as i can.. but things continue to be very busy here. i only promise to do my best. hope you guys feel this blog is helping to keep every one updated.

pretty blue eyed girl.

laylee's new thing.. she crosses her long little legs.

Laylee's surgery...

our eventful day started at four thirty a.m. i had prepared everything we needed to bring the night before so we didn't have anything else to worry about that morning. tina and i were the first ones up.. making coffee and doing our best to hold things together emotionally. we let tyler and laylee sleep in as long as we could before finally waking them up at five. here are a few pictures of the family before we left the house..

laylee looks confused as to why we were all up so dang early..

the three stooges...

momma, daddy and laylee bug..

 we all crammed into the car to make the short fifteen minte drive to memorial hospital. unfortunately we left the exact address at home and arrived late due to idiots at the hospital sending us all over town. they were still more than happy to squeeze her in to get the procedure done. the staff was amazing and very accomadating. they did everything in their power to make all of us as comfortable as possible. her surgery preparation was very quick and completely painless as they don't place i.v.'s before the patients are sedated. here are just a few pictures of all of us loving up on laylee before she was moved into the o.r.

nana and laylee boo bug.

laylee in her cutie patootie patient gown..

momma, daddy and a very confused baby laylee.

before we knew it, they were ready for laylee to come back and start the surgery. every one was very emotional as daddy ty took her in his arms and walked her back to the o.r. to comfort her while she went to sleep. tyler wasn't gone longer than ten minutes before he walked back into the surgical prep area to let us know she was sleeping peacefully and didn't fuss at all going under. the procedure itself only lasted about an hour. we waited in the family gathering area on pins and needles hoping to hear from some one to let us know how things had gone. an hour passed by and dr. grabb (laylee's pediatric nuero surgion) finally came out and gave us the news we had all been waiting to hear. the procedure had gone perfectly and there were no complications at all. she was quickly moved to recovery where she was placed on oxygen and watched closely for any post surgical issues. we were anxious to get back to recovery and see our precious baby laylee. she was very drowsy and still covered head to toe in iodine from the surgery. she has three insicion sites. one at the top of her skull, on on the back right hand side of her skull and a small insicion into her abdomen. they were all looking good and healthy when we went back into recovery. here are some pictures of laylee boo in recovery.

the very first picture of laylee after surgery.

laylee on oxygen.. tyler didn't leave her side.

concerned mommy giving baby laylee oxygen.

a very groggy lil laylee bug.

mommies first chance to hold laylee. it was difficult with all the wires she was attached to.. but SO worth the effort . 

laylee is such a daddies girl. she was so calm in his arms. she is blessed to have such an amazing daddy

being comforted by her daddy.

once laylee was stable she was moved to a private room up in pediatric intensive care. when she started coming to.. we could tell she was hurting. we hounded the nurses to stay on top of her pain managment and check her vitals regularly. she was very needy and so we took shifts between the three of us making sure she had all the love and attention in the world. tina left the hospital around ten p.m. to get some rest and left ty and i on baby duty. we took turns taking care of laylee and running down to the caffeteria for coffee refils. here are a couple of pictures of laylee in the P.I.C.U. 

sleeping angel face.

daddy ty, rocking his lil angel back to sleep.

daddies got mad rocking skills.. this chica is outsky. lol

after a long night and a stressful morning... laylee was seen by the attending physician and discharged. her recovery has been going much better than the dr could have predicted. she is home now and resting very peacefully. if any one has any questions please feel free to text us and we will try and respond asap. we may not be able to answer phone calls because of our ever growing schedule of responsibilities but we will try to get details out to every one via, email, facebook and text...

news, news and more news...

so here's the latest and greatest guys. i am currently getting a 94.4 percent in this modular. I'm hoping t keep it at an A, but the amount of information in these classes is unbelievably overwhelming. we are working on anatomy, lab, lecture, keyboarding and resume classes. it is literally taking everything i have to stay sane through thee courses. i am currently working on a paper about prenatal nutrition. it is due before the end of this mod.. which leaves me about two weeks to get it done. laylee is doing okay. she is starting to do some very cute lil' things. here is a video of laylee just starting to learn how to pucker to give kisses. i was laughing so damn hard. she is too cute. if there isn't any sound, I'm sorry. for some reason y computer doesn't transfer audio from a cell phone video. this was taken on grandma Tina's phone..

we are going to get laylee checked out by her pediatrician as soon as we possibly can. she is starting to have what look like seizures. she will periodically shake her head from side to side and her eyes get shaky. so I'm going to have her looked at to make sure it isn't anything serious. Ty i still job searching. we haven't had any luck yet, but were staying positive. hopefully it will happen for us soon. that's all i have time for right now guys. much luv to those of you who read...

so here is todays update. school is going well, but there are so many students in the class it is hard for all of us to get signed off on what we need to have before this modular ends. i'm feeling pretty overwhelmed and am relying on my sheer will to get me through this. hopfully within the next two weeks i will be able to complete everything i need. i am also currently discovering that during a blood draw.. the longer i have to hold the needle in the arm, the more nervous and jittery i become. i think it may be because i fear the needle wiggiling around or coming out. today i got signed off on a multi tube venipuncture (blood draw) and completely forgot to remove the torniquet! so when i removed the needle blood shot every where. i have done so well with blood draws thus far. i could have kicked myself making such a stupid mistake! i felt like a total idiot... needless to say the video got deleted as i NEVER want to relive that mistake again. i would just as well assume it never happened. my injections are looking good with the exception of my intradermals (injection given just below the skin.. usual for numbing purpouses). i am ALWAYS going too deep into the arm to get a good looking "wheel" (the area that stretches out to form a circle of fluid filled skin).  everything else is going well. tyler is currently looking for work and has had several oppertunities open up.. so hopfuly it wont be too long before he finds work.

here are just a few pictures of the family chillin at the house. we love to just relax at the house and watch movies

silly momy

my husband the pyro.. starting a fire to warm up the house

nana feeding laylee bug

ty kicking back

me and the hubby

mom and baby

mommy the study bug!

yesterday we made another trip tp the denver aquarium with grandma and grandpa olsen! it was so much fun and laylee loved spending time with the family! here are some cute pics pf our fun day..

laylee looking very scary in the morning!

laylees new best friend.. suchi

nana and a very tired laylee bug

nana kisses

crazy grand parents

"no dont take my picture!"

nana the diver!

laylee the deep sea diver

crazy momma and daddy

gpa olsen

laylee was facinated by the electricity

trout

diver cleaning the tank

laylee and daddy

crazy snake

weird long legged bird

pretty fishy

HUGE stingrays!

under side of one of the sharks

tutlres!

neat looking coral

star fish

daddy and laylee in the water bubble

BIG FISHY!

mini shark

mommy and baby monkey

ty and the bug on an adventure

dori.. from finding nemo

clown fish swimming through tentacles

happy laylee and nana

surprise..

nana and laylee looking at the BIG sharks

jelly fish!