One step at a time....

Danielle has settled in at home nicely. With a full week and a half of in-home care behind us we continue to take each day as it comes. Our girl continues to have big smiles on her face almost every single day. Even in moments where she is most sensitive, we see the smiles right around the corner!

Last Wednesday Danielle, I and our nurse trekked to the U to see Neurosurgery and to have Danielle's stitches removed. It was the first time in almost 2 months that the kids were in the car together, mind you, this use to be routine every single day. It was at the moment that we pulled out of the garage and I heard Danielle's squeals in the backseat, how much I realized that she was missing this. Sitting next to her big brother, glancing over at him as she wishes, and giggling at his never ending stories and tall tales. She was delighted to be out of the house. I hadn't even noticed at home until now that she must have had a dose of cabin fever and she was thrilled to be out for a ride!

We were set to see our ARNP whom we see every visit, yet this time was a little different. We actually saw our Neurosurgeons fellow that was in the OR with him for her surgery. He was the one who took her stitches out. She did not cry one bit for the stitches removal, she did cry a little when he was taking her bandage off. It was crazy to see how fast her hair had grown underneath that bandage that I had just replaced some 5 days before. It broke my heart to hear her cry. It was great tho to see how well her incisions looked.

The stitches were in there and he had to pull quite a bit to get them out, but all went great. He covered them right back up and we were on our way home!

Two nights later she was up ALL NIGHT LONG. Oh boy, when you are use to a kiddo sleeping all night long then she's up for 3 nights in a row that makes for pooped out parents! Turns out she has quite a bit of a cold, UGH. She hasn't been out of the house since surgery, we are out for 2 hours and two days later a cold. Makes this mama want to SCREAM! So we are nursing her back to health, pumping her up with her vitamin regimen still and praying for these germs to EXIT! Her vitamin regimen looks like this:
800 IU Vitamin D Daily
1 ML Liquid multivitamin
1/3 tablet of Protandim
Omega 3 liquid
Probiotic -Culturell

Today we decided to remove her bandages. The doc cleared us to take them off 1 day after he took the stitches out. Yet our discharge instructions said to leave the bandage on for 5-7 days after the stitches were taken out, so we decided to compromise. She really loves moving and scooting all over the floor, so my fear was if that incision wasn't secure together very well, well I didn't want to wonder. So today Daddy got out of the house for awhile and I tackled the bandage removal, OUCH!
We started with a bath, this is our improvise on bath time when we couldn't get her hair wet, and I used it today because the sponge helps keep this wiggle worm in place. Sister thinks the tub is a pool most bath days!

To say she loved getting her hair scrubbed is a bit of an understatement. She laid there and  giggled and talked back to me while I was washing her hair, she was one happy girl!
She was however not so happy after bath when I began removing the bandages. She cried and cried and cried. It broke my heart! I was crazy tackling this on my own, but once I started I couldn't stop. We had lots of adhesive remover from the hospital, but it didn't matter it still was really ouchy. Her head must be way more tender than she lets on to us.
I got the top one off and had to take a little break to let her calm down. Then tackled the bottom one. She still has adhesive sticky at parts on her head, but I tried to clean it off best I could with the adhesive remover pads and alcohol wipes. The incisions tho look pretty good.

 She has some breakdown behind her ear and on her neck. I contacted our RN Case Manager today, who already planned on coming out tomorrow to evaluate her incisions, and I wanted to notify her of what i was seeing. As these few hours have gone by we have tried to keep her off her back as much as possible to let it air out, and the spots have begun to dry up which is great to see. I am really glad we didn't take the bandages off before now, I would not have been comfortable at all.

So this afternoon was spent napping and giving extra snuggles. There just isn't enough time on the weekend to get in all of the snuggles we want to give, but we sneak in all we can.

This week we start having therapy in our home 3 days a week and her pre-school teacher will come beginning next week. I know Danielle will be very happy to have this routine again. Her body is really missing therapy and she will be so happy to get all stretched out! We stretch her daily, but nobody stretches her better than the professionals!
So this week begins one step toward our bringing back our little girls educational routine back. We know she is really missing her school friends. We aren't sure when she will be back in the classroom this year, but we are so thankful that we have the support from the school district to bring school to her!

 There's nothing better on a Sunday afternoon to see two smiles from our little Miracles!