Spend any time with Aubrie and Raylee, and you’ll notice the joy before you notice anything else.
Aubrie, 8, uses a wheelchair and will probably start teaching you sign language within minutes. She loves owls, the color orange and Ariel from “The Little Mermaid.” She’s homeschooled in the second grade, and she already knows what she wants to be when she grows up: an animal doctor. “A vet,” she’ll sign, just to be clear.
Raylee, 17 months, is a busy, bright-eyed toddler who loves Ms. Rachel and any game her big sister wants to play. She crawls everywhere, and her legs are getting stronger every week. With a little help, she’s expected to walk.
The girls share a home in Walker with their parents, Hollie and Jake Ross. They also share a diagnosis: spina bifida. And they share a care team, centered, from the very beginning, at FMOL Health | Our Lady of the Lake Children’s Hospital.
A Shared Diagnosis, Unique Journeys
Spina bifida happens when the spine doesn’t fully close early in pregnancy, often before a mother even knows she’s expecting. It can affect movement, bladder and bowel function, and the flow of fluid around the brain. No two cases look exactly alike.
Hollie first heard the words at a routine 20-week anatomy scan during her first pregnancy. Jake wasn’t with her that day. Her mom, Kathy, was. “It hit me by surprise,” Hollie said. “It was a whole whirlwind.”
Years later, after taking prescribed folic acid and doing everything right, she and Jake sat together as a doctor delivered the same news about their second daughter.
Genetic testing came back clear. There was no family history. Even specialists in Texas, where Hollie traveled to explore fetal surgery options for Raylee, had rarely seen two siblings share the diagnosis.
Hollie sees it through the lens of faith. “God just knew I could handle one,” she says. “So He gave me another.”
Aubrie’s Early Fight and the Team That Showed Up
Aubrie had back closure surgery when she was just 2 hours old. Three days later, doctors noticed a high-pitched wheeze. Her vocal cords were paralyzed, and she was breathing through an airway about the size of a straw.
Within weeks, she turned blue during a pediatrician visit and was rushed by ambulance to Our Lady of the Lake Children’s Hospital.
Before our Children’s Hospital had grown into the full-service destination it is today, pediatric ENT care required transfer. A helicopter carried Aubrie and Hollie to New Orleans. Hollie had never been on an airplane. She held on, because that’s what you do.
By the end of that summer, Aubrie had a tracheostomy tube, a feeding tube and a VP shunt. The shunt is a small device placed in her head by pediatric neurosurgeon Lori McBride, MD, to keep the fluid around Aubrie’s brain circulating properly. Without it, the fluid would build up, putting dangerous pressure on her brain.
Dr. McBride, who practices at our Children’s Hospital, has been with this family through it all, from Aubrie’s first shunt placement as an infant to additional procedures over the years, and now through Raylee’s care as well.
Hollie lived beside Aubrie in the hospital for weeks, learning to do what nurses do: trach changes, suctioning, catheterizing and wound care. A trach nurse’s parting words at discharge stayed with her. Aubrie would always experience germs differently. Every room, every crowd, every season required a new kind of awareness.
For six years, a bag of emergency trach supplies went everywhere they went. Sometimes Hollie pulled the car over on the side of the road to clear her daughter’s airway. She did what had to be done.
Then came the news the family had prayed for. At age 6, Aubrie’s vocal cords looked the best they ever had. Her trach came out. She has been trach-free for two years now. She still has therapy multiple times a week and routine MRIs to monitor her shunt. She’s also still smiling.
Raylee’s Turn
When Raylee arrived, Hollie came to the NICU with something she didn’t have the first time: experience.
Raylee also had back closure surgery at 2 hours old. Dr. McBride monitored her head measurements daily in the NICU, watching closely for signs of fluid buildup. At just 2 weeks old, Raylee received her VP shunt. She spent five and a half weeks in the NICU before coming home.
Her vocal cords work perfectly. She doesn’t need a catheter. Hollie still keeps the trach supplies tucked away, just in case, but Raylee’s path has been its own, lighter in some ways and full of its own milestones.
Aubrie came to the NICU nearly every day to support her sister. “That’s her baby,” Hollie says.
Ladybug and Butterfly
Same diagnosis, different paths. One sister uses a wheelchair, and the other will likely walk. One spent six years with a trach, and the other never needed one.
Even their scars tell different stories. Aubrie’s closure scar looks like a ladybug. For Raylee, Dr. McBride’s team brought in a plastic surgeon, and her scar is shaped like a butterfly. Both girls are proud of them.
These days, Aubrie slides out of her wheelchair to scoot across the floor and play at her sister’s level. She’s teaching Raylee sign language so they can talk in the back seat. When a phone alarm sounds for one of the many daily routines, Aubrie already knows: “Sissy feed time.”
“They’re best friends,” Hollie says. “They’ll always be able to lean on each other.”
A Family Rule That Changes Everything
Hollie has one rule she never breaks. She doesn’t tell her girls they can’t do something.
“I just say we do it differently,” she says.
That belief carries them to playgrounds, plays and events, and even a weekend trip to Mississippi, where Hollie packed medical supplies and looked up the nearest hospital before they left the driveway. Inclusion matters to her completely, even when an inaccessible space means lifting a 40-pound child herself.
Aubrie has never been shy about it either. For years, she sat in her wheelchair by the register at her grandparents’ grocery store and taught customers sign language. Many of them learned just so they could talk with her.
A Team That Goes the Distance
Hollie hasn’t walked this road alone. Her mom, Kathy, has come to nearly every appointment. Aubrie and Raylee see roughly 15 doctors across three hospitals, with Our Lady of the Lake Children’s Hospital at the center of their care.
Dr. McBride’s spina bifida clinic, which brings multiple specialists together in one place, has been a lifeline, letting the family see several providers in a single visit instead of piecing together care across scattered appointments.
“She set up the clinic here, and we didn’t have to keep going everywhere,” Hollie says. “She cares about the whole child, not just the surgery.”
Hollie also found nurses she still keeps in touch with, therapists who have worked with Aubrie since she was 4 months old, and a community of special needs moms who understand without explanation.
At home, Hollie is the girls’ primary around-the-clock caregiver, while their dad, Jake, runs a lawn care business to provide for the family. The girls love talking with him on the phone between jobs, and his customers even check in and ask about them. For Hollie, the path hasn’t always been easy, but it has made one thing clear: a diagnosis does not define a child or a family. Aubrie and Raylee are, first and always, a blessing.
More Than What They’ve Overcome
On October 17, Aubrie and Raylee will be recognized as FMOL Health | Our Lady of the Lake Geaux Heroes during the LSU Football game against Mississippi State, celebrating their joy, resilience and the special bond they share.
Aubrie and Raylee are heroes not because of what they’ve survived, but because of how they live. They meet each day with curiosity, courage and wonder that draws people in.
Hollie wouldn’t change a thing. “They’re perfect in my eyes,” she says.
To any parent hearing the words “spina bifida” for the first time, this family offers a hopeful truth: the road looks different, but it can still be full of laughter, love and big dreams. Some of those dreams might even include a future veterinarian and her little sister, cheering her on every step of the way.
