(upbeat music) - Will you consider this?

We all have our crosses to bear, and things happen to us out of the blue that we obviously don't anticipate, don't ever expect, and Layla Slater had a horrifying, really life changing experience, and she shares that experience by a book that she has authored.

This is "Saving Abigail Grace".

So welcome my friend and neighbor.

- Thank you, thank you so much.

- And yeah.

So, first of all, tell me a little bit about you.

Who's Layla Slater?

- Okay, well, today, Layla Slater is in the financial industry (laughs) with my husband.

We actually own a small business here called Slater Wealth Management.

And so that's what I do to earn money.

I have two kiddos, Abigail being my youngest, and then Noah is 24, getting ready to graduate next week from Mizzou.

So yeah, we're just local here to Peoria, live right down the street from you in a fantastic neighborhood, and we're just kinda plugging away, empty nesters, loving life.

- Well, you are originally from Monmouth.

- I am, yep.

- Okay, home of Wyatt Earp.

- [Layla] Yes, that's true.

- Birthplace of Wyatt Earp, anyway.

- [Layla] Yeah.

- And Brian, your husband, is from here.

- He is, yes, yes.

- Okay.

And you met at Western Illinois University.

- We did, yep, in Spanish class.

(Layla laughs) Okay.

He was David and I was Lucia, and yeah, we just, it's in the book, but we just got to know each other because he always needed a ride, and just went to labs together and had a good time.

So we were friends for a long time before it ever developed into anything else.

- All right.

Well, then you fell in love.

- Yes.

- And you had Noah.

And then you were pregnant after several years.

Noah was?

- He was two and a half when Abby was born, yep.

So, little tyke.

- All right.

So, let's go, you were living in Lincoln, Nebraska.

- We were, yes.

- And you were out in the field.

- Yeah.

- Living your dream.

- Yeah, actually, I have a master's degree in environmental studies from UIS, and I really wanted to work for the government in some way, and so I always thought it would be EPA or something like that, but I landed with Department of Agriculture in a division called Natural Resources Conservation Service, or NRCS.

So at the time that we were in Lincoln, I got a great job.

We actually moved out there for Brian's job.

And I was really fortunate to be able to get a job in the field, with farmers, working for the NRCS, and we just created erosion control practices for the... Everybody thinks that the Midwest is so flat, but there are a lot of hills out there, and so we would build terraces and basins for farmland.

So it was great.

I was out in the field all the time, which was, you know, kind of my dream.

I didn't really wanna be behind a- - A desk.

- Desk all the time.

And I loved working with the farmers.

Everybody I worked with in the field and in the office were just fantastic people.

And so, really, I never had any vision of moving back to Illinois, because we loved Lincoln so much.

We really did.

We were only there for a short amount of time when the accident happened, and we already had such a huge network of friends and supporters in Lincoln, in that area.

- At that time.

- So I loved it, yeah.

- Well, you were on your way to work one morning.

You were pregnant with Abigail.

- [Layla] Yep.

- And tell me what happened.

You say it in the book, but I mean, you really bared your soul in this book.

- I did.

You know, here's the thing.

I'm not an author by trade, you know?

I like to write.

I've always been really, you know, I love English, love to read, love to edit other people's pieces, but it was never my ambition, really, to write anything.

So, I say all that because I... How do I say this?

I never imagined that I would be here, right?

And so when we were living in Lincoln, going through all the motions, that particular day, I would drive into Wahoo, is where I worked, it's a very rural Nebraska area, and I would drop Noah off at daycare in Wahoo.

And then just a few, you know, maybe five minute drive from there was my office.

And so, day like any other, that's how the first chapter opens up.

I'm on my way to work, getting ready to turn into our parking lot, which is on a curve in this, you know, two lane rural highway.

And it's funny, because we would always be inside the office watching people come around that curve just so fast.

If you understand, you know, rural Nebraska, rural Illinois, wherever you are, there are a lot of grain haulers, so, you know, lots of farming activity going on, and we would be like, "Somebody's gonna get hammered one of these days."

I mean, it was just, the traffic was, you know, it was just so fast going around that curve.

Well, lo and behold, that was me.

(Layla laughs) - Oh, gosh.

- So, I was waiting to make a left hand turn into the parking lot, and it was, you know, right at eight o'clock, just waiting for this red semi, I'll never forget it, coming my direction, and wasn't really paying attention to what was going on behind me, and I got clobbered from behind, and that was a semi who pushed me into oncoming traffic, which was another one, so I was kind of...

If you look at- - Sandwiched.

- If you look at the picture- - I know.

- The only place that was survivable happened to be the place that I was sitting, thank God.

So yeah, just kind of got clobbered right there at that intersection, and from there it's like, I remember bits and pieces, and everything that's in this book is so 100% factual, my account.

None of it is... You know how sometimes you watch things that are like, "Oh, this is based on a true story"?

- Yeah, and they had to weave this in to make it work, right?

- Yes.

No, this is raw.

This is me telling my story the best way that I know how.

It's not necessarily polished, it is absolutely me accounting everything I remember, and then what I couldn't remember, filling in gaps with conversations with people.

Lots and lots of medical records.

Thankfully, I wrote down a lot of things back then, 'cause I don't have the greatest memory all the time.

So yeah, it was just pulling together all these things for me to create it.

- Well, that's Abby's life story.

- Yeah.

And when I first started writing it, it was really to account a lot of the things that I knew I probably wasn't gonna remember, because, you know, you're in a brownout during that whole entire time, you know?

It wasn't just my injuries, I had a lot to overcome myself.

But, you know, once she was born and everything, having all that, you're just kind of like, go, go, go, not remembering, necessarily, all the pieces.

So I just started jotting things down a lot, which came in handy when I finally decided that I wanted to share the story.

- Right.

Well, so, you were seven months pregnant?

- So yeah, I was 32 weeks pregnant, and so she was born that day with a lot of brain trauma.

She was eight weeks early, which was kind of like, you know, it's doable in these days when we have such incredible medical people.

- And that was in 2000- - It was in 2002.

- 2, right.

- Yep, so 22 years ago.

And so, you know, she was born about three hours after the accident because they didn't really know immediately what the trauma was to the baby, they were concerned about getting me out of the car to a hospital and, you know, all of that.

So it was just like everything kept developing once they extracted me from the car, got me from one hospital to another hospital.

'Cause you know, I ended up at, first, in a very- - Rural hospital.

- Small rural hospital.

They saw almost immediately that they couldn't, you know, they just couldn't handle what I had to offer.

- [Christine] Your injuries, right, exactly.

- And so then I got transferred- - And then they delivered the baby there.

- They did not.

- No, at the second hospital.

- Yep, they delivered the baby, or delivered Abby, at a hospital in Lincoln.

And then once she was, you know, once they saw the trauma there and things sort of developed, she ended up at the children's hospital in Omaha, which was, you know, it's about, if I remember right, about an hour drive from Lincoln, give or take a little bit.

So that's, you know, I was in a hospital in Lincoln, she was in a hospital in Omaha.

I had broken sacrum and pelvis amongst other injuries to recover from while she was kind of, you know, fighting for her life in Omaha.

So, that was another tricky part for our family.

You know, it just being Brian, Noah, and me at the time, we didn't have any family members in Nebraska.

- No support system.

- Nothing.

You know, just our friends, who did everything they could do, but still, you know?

- [Christine] Right.

- So yeah, it was a lot at once.

- And Abby, well, I mean, it was a rough start for her to begin with, but then there was another obstacle and another obstacle and another obstacle to overcome.

And you recorded, you kept track of all that too, because she was being diagnosed with every kind of situation.

- Yeah, you name it, it was just like...

I'm not kidding when I say she has a file cabinet that has nothing but her medical records, because I got all the medical records every time I could.

"Give me copies," you know?

And at that time, it was all paper, you know?

It's not like they could send 'em via email.

- [Christine] Right.

- So, yeah, I have tons of medical records that I went through, and that was important for me to build the timeline, too, for the book, because, you know, at first it's like, okay, we know she has a skull fracture, she has, what they called later, hydrocephalus, because her body doesn't naturally drain the cerebral spinal fluid from her brain, so she had to have a shunt placed.

And then that shunt failed, had to have another shunt placed.

- [Christine] And this was all before what age?

- Oh, gosh, that was before she was a month old.

(laughs) - Geez.

- Yeah.

So, she was a wreck for a long time.

I didn't get to meet her until she was five days old because I was trying to recover as well.

I couldn't walk to begin with, and so I had to learn how to walk through my injuries before they would release me to go see her prematurely, Because, you know, I did talk them into getting me the heck out of there.

- [Christine] "I wanna see My baby," right?

- "Get me out of here."

So, the people that I worked with at St. Elizabeth at the time that got me through my trauma, they were fantastic, 'cause they would just be kind of dangling this carrot.

"Like, if you do these things, we can get you out of here."

And I was, like, focused.

So, got out and was able to see her for the first time when she was five days old.

- Did you have her name picked out already before she was born?

- We didn't, because what's interesting with her is that we didn't know the sex of the baby.

- Okay.

- So, you know, we found out with Noah because I don't like surprises.

- [Christine] Right.

- But we never knew with her.

So it wasn't until, gosh, I mean, maybe a day after she was born, once I was finally coherent, because they had to extract her with me being completely out of it.

That's when we settled on, you know, Abigail.

And Grace was important to me.

- Because this also, this book also tells your faith journey.

- It does.

- And that's what really propped you up and got you through.

- Yeah, it did.

I don't know what I would've done.

I was a fairly new Christian at the time.

I wasn't raised, you know, in any faith or anything like that.

So for me, not having that, I can't even imagine how we would've gotten through.

And it is definitely...

The story, it's so, like, multifaceted, really, the book, I should say, because it talks a lot about, you know, just moving through everything the best that you can as a parent, or as even, like, you know, someone who's recovering myself, going through the daily motions and all the conversations with the medical personnel and learning one diagnosis after another, and then trying to get out of the hospital, 'cause we ended up being in the hospital until the day after Christmas, with a couple of days in between that we actually got released and had to go back.

But it was just like, there were so many things to get through, so it is me telling my story to other parents who may, you know, be going through a difficult situation like we did, no matter what the diagnoses are for their kiddos.

There's something that you can relate to if you've ever been, you know, if you've ever had to stay at a hospitality house, which we had to do, 'cause, you know, you're an hour away from home and you need to spend as much time as you can with your baby.

Thankfully, we had a hospitality house called Rainbow House that my family lived in for two months.

They were fantastic.

So that, you know, it's just there are so many different pieces, and you can find it all on the website, because it's not only, like, the resources where you're reading through all the medical terminology.

In the book, you know, I'll take you by way of QR code to the website to learn more about all those things that I'm talking about.

- Exactly.

- But I also am talking about, I made a directory of hospitality houses throughout the United States that people can stay in if they're in that situation.

Or just learning about, okay, hey, if you have a kiddo that's going through the special education system, this is how you get through an IEP, you know, like- - [Christine] An individual education program, right?

- Yes, and just developing your team at school, your medical team, you're all... You have to be working together all the time, and there are so many pieces, so that's something that I talk about in the book and the website.

- And I was very impressed by that, because, I mean, you shared your experiences, and you're not preaching to anyone.

You're saying, "Here's how I approached it, and you can think about these same things too."

- [Layla] Yes.

- "And here are some examples and, yeah, here's some reference for you."

- Yes.

- Exactly.

- And that's really what I hope to accomplish over anything else.

Let's be honest, I didn't do this to make a million dollars, because if I ever even get out of a hole that I created for myself financially, that'll be a win for me.

A lot goes into creating a book like this.

I didn't wanna take a shortcut.

There are pictures.

The formatting was expensive.

There's a lot that goes into it.

But I, at the end of the day, felt led by, and it's important for me to say this, I felt led by God, that I need to share this story with other people so that I can help them in ways that I felt absolutely hopeless, you know, at times when I was going through it, because it was a day and age before social media, before digital files, before so many things.

So just trying to get medical records, I had to write letters to everybody.

The process was not easy.

And so, you know, while I was kind of going through this in my mind how I'm going to tell this story and the things that I want to accomplish by telling it, it was really important to be able to share, these things worked for me, and this is what I would encourage you to do.

These are the credible sources that you can go to.

I've done all the work.

So if you just Google things, a lot of times, you're gonna end up in a black hole.

And so I wanted to offer those things to parents or to patients, or whoever it is.

You don't have to be a parent to appreciate it either.

I just really wanted that to get out there to people so that they knew, "Okay, I can go to her website and just grab pieces as they apply to me."

And I'm constantly updating the website too, you know?

- And that's the www.savingabigailgrace.com.

- Yes.

- All right.

Well, that's good to know.

- Yeah.

- And Abby now, she's done well, but she still struggles.

- Yes, yep.

- Because she's got everything still to deal with.

- Lots of stuff.

- Starting from day one on this earth.

- Yes, yes.

And you know, the thing is, I always wanna learn, what can I take from each situation, right?

It used to be, "Why are you doing this to me?

Why are we going through this?"

You know, I used to kind of ask God in, you know, our conversations, like, "What did I do to deserve this," you know?

And so it was this pivotal moment, and I can't even really describe, like, when it happened or how it happened, but I finally decided that it's not...

I shouldn't be asking, you know, "Why did this happen to me?"

Because things happen to great people all the time, right?

And I started asking, "What am I supposed to learn from this?

What am I gaining?

And what can I do for others as a result?"

And oh my gosh, that was like a switch for me.

- To turn it around.

- Yes.

Because you're no longer living in this negative space, you know?

You're living in this place where it's like, no matter what I'm going through, I am going to be able to help someone, you know?

And so that sort of mindset helped Abby and helped me, helped our whole family.

You know, we lived in this crazy space all the time where it wasn't always rainbows and lollipops, but we turned it into comical stuff, you know?

My husband is very lighthearted, and he would always just, you know, be making jokes or whatever, a lot like my dad.

And so I think that when we decided that we were just gonna take it as it comes and, you know, do with it what we needed to and what God was instructing us to do, it really helped the situation so much.

And Abby, she was diagnosed, you know, one thing after another, and we, instead of getting overwhelmed all the time by that, it was just like, okay, well, what are we gonna do to make this better, you know?

And you wouldn't know it today.

She was at one point...

So she was diagnosed with hydrocephalus, cerebral palsy, and epilepsy, are the three that we have been, you know, I've been championing a lot, you know?

So I'm involved with, like, Epilepsy Foundation and have a certificate with them, actually, to help people understand epilepsy more.

- [Christine] You tackled this situation.

- Yeah.

- You did.

- Yes, and I was like, we're gonna learn about it, we're gonna be better for it, and we're gonna get Abby through this.

So her left side didn't work, really, at all, when she was little.

She couldn't ride a bike.

She couldn't swim.

She couldn't even walk.

We had to teach her how to walk with both sides.

- Because she would tip, yeah.

- Yeah.

And with chiropractic care, like, with PT and all that, physical therapy and all that, she learned at a young age how to overcome all of this, which is fantastic, and the reason that I say that is because a girl that was couldn't even walk right, couldn't even sit upright when she was, you know, learning how to sit up, and we never thought she would ride a bike or swim, she ended up in cross country and she ended up on the swim team when she was at Peoria Notre Dame.

So it's so funny how all these things, if you decide, you know, that you ditch the, "Woe is me."

- "By golly, I'm gonna do it."

Right?

- Yeah.

And you decide, "Okay, this is my mountain today.

How am I tackling this?"

We just really learned that that's how we wanna continue to live.

And to this day, she struggles in college, but she's doing really well, especially considering they told us she'd never live on her own.

You know, she's been living in her own apartment by herself for three years now.

Every time there's an obstacle and I wanna be like, "Okay, I'm gonna fight for her, I'm gonna do this, you tell me who I need to talk to," she's like, "I got this."

And she's doing a really great job advocating for herself at college.

And, you know, she's going into her senior year and wants to teach special education, although I've been like, "I don't know why you wanna do that," you know?

Just because I couldn't imagine myself doing it, but she's got a gift for that, you know?

- Well, and as you were saying, God put that in her heart and in her mind and in her soul to be a survivor and to go for it.

- [Layla] Yes, absolutely.

- And she sees you have been the example.

You have already, you know, charted that course for her.

- Yeah, I mean, that's...

I hope that I've done some good there.

I think that she's always been this vibrant girl that she's always smiling, just has this, I don't know, this ray of sunshine about her.

Every picture, I was digging through pictures, everyone I found, she was smiling.

We always called her Snoopy 'cause she'd smile like, you know?

And tilt her head back.

And she was always in such a good mood, always just so easy to be around.

But the struggles with school and all that, you could see it was difficult for... You know, it's like she had gifts over here in the way that she made people feel around her and still does, but then the education piece and all of the struggles that she had in the classroom, just, there were times where you could see it would get to her.

We really did... She, you know, sought therapy, just like her mom.

And I think it's been a good thing, you know?

Just to be able to talk through those things.

And she's just really been an inspiration to me, and I think to a lot of other people, truly, because she just doesn't give up, you know?

And she does it with a smile on her face.

And sometimes she cries, but then she gets it out and it's just like, "Okay, I'm done."

- [Christine] Flipped that switch.

- "Yep, I'm moving on, and I'm gonna get through this."

And she does it all the time, every day.

- Good for her.

So you've had a lot of services here, and it's a good thing that you had the children's hospital here, because you had specialists to work with for her as well too.

So, where do you go from here, turning a mother's story of transforming pain into purpose?

- So, really, what I hope to accomplish, now that, you know, she's kind of through all the dark times and is on cruise control, really, as far as her medical journey is concerned, I really would love to just be able to help people understand that there's always good in every situation.

You know, I love to talk to people.

I love to meet people from all different...

I just really love to talk people through stuff, you know?

And that's been a big goal of mine, also, to educate people with epilepsy and hydrocephalus especially, 'cause those are the two main ones that we dealt with, and I'm involved with Hydrocephalus Association as well.

Just trying to get that message out there, make people feel a little more comfortable being around someone who has seizure disorders.

- That it's okay, yeah.

- Yeah, you know, helping to educate school staff, administrators, and things like that with epilepsy, especially because when you learn that you have a kiddo in the classroom that has seizure disorder, it's natural to feel a little bit, you know, scared, right?

- Intimidated, right.

- And so we took it upon ourselves to educate our own school district at the time, just so that they understand, when you see someone having a seizure, there's really nothing that you can do but let it happen safely for them, and, you know, move on from there.

They'll be tired afterwards, so maybe let 'em go home and sleep it off.

And that really, that education piece is so important because then they just feel so much more comfortable around those kiddos.

So, I'd love to educate a little bit as well, while I'm just kind of helping people to navigate their own circumstances.

In any way that I can, I'm happy to help.

- Well, thanks so much, Layla, for sharing your story.

It really is, it's a heart wrenching story, but it's very lovely.

- Thank you.

- Lovingly put together.

So thanks so much for being here.

- Thank you.

- Thanks for sharing your story, and Abby's story.

We'll have to have her on one of these days.

- Oh, heck yes.

- We have to talk to her.

She can give us the lowdown.

- She could, absolutely.

Thanks for having me, Chris.

- Thank you, thanks.

And thank you for joining us.

Until next time, be well.

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