The Vallecillo’s

Today we fed Landri peas for the first time and she loved them! The funniest thing about it were the sounds she was making as she was eating them, much like the sounds we all make we we eat something that is unexpectedly delicious.

It makes perfect sense if you think about it. If all you ever had was baby formula (I’m not sure what it tastes like, but if it is anywhere close to how it smells then I rather never find out) you’d also think pureed canned peas were delicious as well. Seriously!

I’m so not looking forward to that diaper!

Today we met the Dallas orthopedic surgeon for the first time. The good news is that Mandi is not going to need surgery after all. Whew!

The doctor examined the X-Rays, took a closer look at Mandi’s wrist out of the sling, and told her he wanted to wait for the swelling to go down further before replacing the sling with a cast. I could tell from Mandi’s expression that wasn’t what she wanted to hear. It wasn’t until Mandi asked the doctor if there was anything he could do to fix a specific area of the sling that was really hurting her that made him change his mind. She now has a nice purple cast that she will wear for the next 6.5 weeks.

Unfortunately that means that for a while I’ll need to continue picking up some of the slack since there are things Mandi simply isn’t able to do right now. Lifting babies (or anything over 10 lbs. for that matter), changing diapers, and giving baths are all at the top of that list. Yes, it has been very interesting around here for the last week and I can hardly wait for the next 6.5.

My niece is a radiologist, and her husband an orthopedic surgeon, down in Stephenville, TX. Being only a 2.5 hour drive from our home in Lewisville, Mandi decided it would be worth the trip down there so that they could take a good look at her broken wrist. This was on a Thursday so Mandi’s parents rose to the occasion and drove her, and Landri, there.

It was a good thing she made the trip because Bill (my niece’s husband) took a whole new set of X-Rays and found out that not only was her wrist broken, but it was broken in 3 places! Unable to cast it still because of the swelling, Bill redid her original splint doing his best to immobilize the broken wrist. He was concerned that with a break like hers surgery might be needed for proper healing, so he made sure everything was properly placed and aligned before sending her home.

Bill referred Mandi to a Dallas orthopedic surgeon for her follow-up, which she will schedule as soon as possible. He will take another set of X-Rays at that time and, depending how the healing is coming along, decide whether she gets a cast or gets scheduled for surgery.

Unfortunately we just can’t seem to be able to stay away from the ER for long. Last month it was a seizure, this month was… well, I’m getting ahead of myself.

The good news is that Mandi is feeling much better now. The problem is that when Mandi feels better, Mandi thinks she is 20 years-old once again. So on Sunday, March 9, towards late in the afternoon, we see our neighbors on their front yard and decide to go outside and be neighborly. We say hello and strike a conversation, when along comes their 9 year-old son Andrew and his friend Matthew on their rollerblades. I continue our conversation, but Mandi starts a new conversation with Andrew (hmmm, was she bored with all the “adult talk”?). I’m not sure exactly how that conversation went, but from what I’ve been told Andrew challenged Mandi to a rollerblade race. Knowing Mandi as well as I do, or think I do, something tells me the challenger and challengee were reversed in the version of the story, but I digress.

Next thing I know I’m holding Landri, and Mandi is off to our house for whatever reason (I don’t even ask anymore). She returns after a few short minutes carrying her rollerblades, and this is when my mind starts trying to figure out what crazy thing my wife might be up to. This process basically starts with: “WWLD” (what would Lucy do?) But by the time my brain was able to calculate all the different combinations (it is a humdinger of an equation!) Mandi was already in her rollerblades. I made only two comments at that point, wrongfully treating Mandi like an adult. Those comments were:

1. “I have already met the ER quota for this year, so I do not want to go there again today”
2. Directed towards our neighbor, but loud enough for Mandi to hear: “You know those times you see something and you instantly know how bad of an idea it is, but yet there is little you can do about it? This is one of those times.”

With that said, Mandi takes off towards one side of the street where she is about to “kick some 9 year-old butt” in a rollerblade race. Not 30-seconds later someone yells “car!!!”, Mandi panics, and in an attempt to move out of the road she falls squarely on her butt. As I shook my head in disbelief the car dives past them (surely making some comments to her passenger(s) about the the grown-woman on the rollerblades) and Mandi resumes her rollerblade race. Not only does she lose the race, but when she comes back to where we were (you know, the adults) she is bleeding from a scrape on her wrist caused by her attempt to break her fall.

I guess at this time I should point out Mandi failed to grab her elbow/knee pads or wristguard when she got her inline skates. I’m guessing the “I need to be cool” factor played a small roll in this decision, but that is just a guess. Anyway, this means her wrist took the brunt of the fall and now it was hurting quite a bit. We argued about it for a little bit because now she had moved on from the “Lucy” mode and into the “tough-guy” mode (also known as the “Ken-mode”, her dad), and she wanted to tough it out. I finally put my foot down, which I should have done much earlier, and told her I was taking her to the ER.

After all the ER hoopla was over with Mandi went home with a broken wrist and a splint (wrist was too swollen for a cast). By now she was now in a lot of pain, and quickly left “Ken-mode” and slipped back into normal (whatever that is) girly-mode. We are supposed to wait a week before going to see a doctor about getting her into a real cast. I presume that is going to be one very long week for all.

Sorry for the long delay in posting the results from the 24-hour EEG. It has been quite a month as you will soon learn as I bring the blog completely up to date, hopefully within the next few days.

I could go into all sorts of crazy details about the results of her EEG and completely overwhelm you with my extensive knowledge of the central nervous system, the peripheral nervous system and the autonomic nervous system, but I’m not going to. In the simplest of terms, there doesn’t seem to be anything out off the ordinary going on in her noggin’. No, that was NOT and insult!

We now wait to see what the next step in this saga is going to be. The doctor has suggested some extra blood-work to be done, but since neither of us is particularly excited about the neurologist we are currently seeing we just might wait until we can find someone else for a second opinion.

Oh great! I’m sorry, but this is the way my mind works. I have to do it… I’m so sorry:

I went to the psychiatrist, and he says, “You’re crazy. ” I tell him I want a second opinion. He says, “Okay, you’re ugly too!”

- Rodney Dangerfiled

On Thursday Mandi was outfitted with a whole bunch of wires and electrodes for her 24-hour EEG. We got to the hospital at 11:30 am, and by 12:30 pm electrodes were being glued to Mandi’s head. I didn’t count how many she ended up with, but there were quite a few of them. The procedure was surprisingly quick given all the measuring, gluing and checking they had to do. Once done they wrapped her head with some gauze and tape, and gave us the 2-minute spill about what to do and not to do for the next 24-hours. We were then sent off with a logbook to keep track of her activities, the EEG recording unit (nicely packed inside a very fashionable fanny-pack) and an extra set of batteries.

Back at the house Mandi made her best effort to cover up her gear with a bandana, but with all the bandages she had it was hard to hide the fact that it looked like she had just gotten back from a facelift. Be that as it may, I thought she looked quite stylish in her gauze-bandana outfit. Throughout the day she logged as many events as she could and tried with all her might to resist the urge to rip the electrodes right out of her head. Turns out wearing a bazillion electrodes for 24-hours is not the most comfortable thing in the world. Shocking!

On Friday it was back to the hospital for the removal process. As they were removing the electrodes they discovered that one of them was no longer attached. Now we need to find out if that is going to cause a problem that would require going through this whole process yet again. We sure hope not.

The removal of the rest of the electrodes was a painful one, leaving behind sore and tender electrode-size spots throughout her noggin, as well as a whole mess of leftover glue and other miscellaneous junk. Back at home, and after cleaning up, Mandi is feeling much better. To prove it, here is her instant message to me at 4:15 pm: “I don’t know when I have ever had a better shower. It took 3 shampoos and 4 conditionings to get it all out, it was so gross. My hair was matted in big huge lumps, yucky! I look like a different person.”

Now we are up to the same waiting game as with the MRI. Hopefully the neurologist will take a look at the results on Monday and let us know something one way or another. I will, of course, update the blog when we know something.

You can view all the pictures on our 24-hour EEG flickr photo set.