Whenever I roast a turkey or chicken I ALWAYS make my famous soup. So after having our turkey dinner on Sunday evening I spent the day in the kitchen on Monday making soup and pureed baby food. For supper we all had soup and turkey sandwiches, YUM YUM. Thanksgiving left overs are almost better than [...]

Lena and I finally came home from the hospital, after another emergency surgery, on Monday October 1st. My little one had to have another emergency surgery on Sunday afternoon to correct the placement of the shunt tubing. When I last wrote I mentioned that she was having more trouble recovering from this surgery than the [...]

I don’t want to jinx anything but we are finally on the home stretch. Lena had her shunt internalization surgery this morning. Everything went very well and she is recovering in our room in the Pediatric ward. Yeah no PICU this surgery. She is still needs codeine for the pain and is sleeping soundly as [...]

Today it has been a whole month that Korrina and Lena have been in the hospital, living in their little *8 x 8 cell* as Korrina calls it.
Lena’s white cell count is still way too high.  The doctors are wondering if the injections of antibiotics through her drainage may be causing the white blood cell [...]

“Making the decision to have a child is momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body”
Elizabeth Stone
In Hebrew, Lena means “light.” I thought that was particularly fitting. When Lena is much older, she’ll like knowing that her name means “alluring” in Latin, but for now, I [...]

Yesterday was not such a good day. I have to say I am seriously discouraged, everything was going so well and she has been herself for days.Yesterday when she woke, I expected some irritability and lethargy. After all she did have surgery last night. She usually recovers so quickly I kind of expected her to [...]

Today was a fairly busy day. Lena had a CT scan this morning to make sure that her ventriculostomy is working. There was a little bit of an increase in ventricle size but the minute change can also be attributed to the infection and high protein levels so we will have another on Thursday to [...]

The Good News - Lena’s CT scan went very well today, again like the little trooper that she is, she did the whole scan completely awake. The surgeon came to see me afterward and said that it looks like the ventriculostomy is working and he is not planning on replacing her shunt. In stead he [...]

We are still waiting to recover enough from the infection to take the EVD out and go home, could be a while I’m told. We are starting to feel as if we will be stuck in this hospital forever. Our neurosurgeon returned to day and assured me that we will not be here forever only [...]

Once in the ER Lena was stabilized and a multitude of tests were preformed. The pediatrician on call suspected that  there could be a problem with her shunt however when he went to insert an IV and she was non responsive (she just looked at him and let him insert an IV into her hand, [...]

Last Monday night at about 7:30pm I called 911 to dispatch an ambulance to my house to take Lena to the Emergency Room I knew that it was not safe for me to try to take her there myself.
Since her surgery over three weeks ago my Little Lena has not been the same. We have [...]

So while I was gone with Kassie by Mom called my cell phone to say that Lena had just really scared her, she had thrown up, a lot, and seemed to stop breathing when she did it. She said she turned her over and slapped her back and she seemed fine again. i figured it [...]

So as you all have read, our appointment with the neurosurgeon didn’t go exactly as planned. Lena had brain surgery at 10am on Thursday August 9th. The cyst that had been compressing the right side of her brain was broken apart (cyst fenestration) so that it could drain through the ventricle and out the shunt. [...]

See those gorgeous eyes?  That’s little Miss Lena and you’re going to be seeing a lot more of that awesome gaze very soon. Me? I’m the twins’ biggest fan. If you’ve been reading along, you know that Lena (and her Mommy and Daddy) went to see the neurosurgeon again on Tuesday. 
They were really hoping Lena [...]