Karen's Blog

Paul's Update: June 29th at 3pm

Karen is going through the final preparations for her release from the hospital. So far, everything is go for her release on Friday afternoon. Her dad and I have gone through specific trainings at the hospital in order to get us comfortable with transfers, going up and down stairs, etc. Her dad also has retained the services of a home health care professional, and she has been attending many of the training sessions as well. Kai (sp. ?) seems very nice, and Karen likes her. They should do very well together.

Karen has been making significant improvements since my last post. Her therapists all agree that she is coming along quite nicely. Some of the things we are seeing . . . reduction in the swelling of her left leg and arm. She is gaining greater movement in the left arm and hand. She still has considerable pain there, but is able to grasp some objects and raise her arm when she wants to. The physical therapist has been focusing pretty intently on getting Karen to start walking. She has Karen taking some steps with the assistance of a walker, transferring from the wheelchair to a bed on her own, and going up and down some stairs with someone aiding her.

I think we have seen some improvements mentally as well. I have been doing crossword puzzles with her on some nights that I visit, and she as able to follow quite intently, answering most of the clues pretty quickly. Heck, some of them I don’t even know the answer to, particularly when it comes to literature. Gee, there’s a surprise.

She is definitely ready to go home, and is getting a little antsy. I suspect she will continue to exceed some of our expectations, once she is at home and getting more focused attention, and therapy. We are all looking forward to it as well.

posted by Karen's Blog @ Thursday, June 29, 2006 3 comments

Paul's Update: June 20th at 11:30am

Ever since Karen was told that she would be going home we all agree she seems to be buoyed by her approaching discharge date. She seems more alert, extremely talkative, and sometimes a bit ornery. She also continues to improve with the movement of her left arm, and is beginning to move the left leg as well as put some weight on it.

She is scheduled to be fitted for a wheelchair on Thursday. Apparently, it can take several months for the custom chair to arrive, so she will be using a temporary one until then. However, Ken and I suspect that by the time it comes she may not need it much anymore. I hope that is the case.

We are also making plans for some alterations to Ken’s home to make it wheelchair accessible in anticipation of Karen’s arrival.

On Sunday, we obtained authorization for a “day pass” to take Karen out of the hospital for a few hours. We drove her to her condo, where we met her friend Barbara Paulson. I cooked a nice Father’s Day dinner for the four of us. We had a wonderful time just hanging out. It was the first time Karen had seen her place in almost three months. I think she enjoyed being in her own home again. The photo was taken while she was relaxing in her recently purchased recliner.

Since Karen has DSL in her place, I took the opportunity to show her the blog. She spent some time reading through many of the posts, and was quite amazed. She was also quite touched by some of your comments. I asked her if she would be interested in posting something for everyone to read. She dictated the following to me:

“I am here at my condo, having just finished a nice dinner of salmon with Paul, my dad, and Barbara Paulson. We also just finished looking at the blog. I appreciate all of your kind words expressed.

My heart was touched by seeing you at my mother’s funeral.

I love you all and I can’t wait to see you again. Feel free to come and visit me when I get to my dad’s house. I really look forward to seeing you all soon. Just don’t come all at once ;-) ”

Along with the photo I took of Karen, I shot a short video clip (click here for video) with my digital camera. I thought many of you who haven’t been able to visit her would like to see it. She was being a little silly when her dad (who was sitting to her left) asked her to wave to the camera. It’s classic Karen.

In all, we were gone almost 5 ½ hours. We all had a great time, and Karen didn’t want to go back to the hospital.

A Happy Father’s Day.

(Note: The video is approx 3MB-10 sec in length, so download time for those with 56K modems is approx 10min; All other connections will be less then a minute if not seconds)

posted by Karen's Blog @ Tuesday, June 20, 2006 4 comments

Paul's Update: June 14th at 4pm

We had another “Family Meeting” today at the hospital. These meetings are for the purpose of informing the patient’s family (and significant other) as to the patient’s rehabilitation progress or lack of it, their overall condition, and the plans for their immediate future. In Karen’s situation it was to discuss her upcoming discharge from the hospital.

Currently, the plans are for her discharge to be Friday, June 30th. This is by no means written in stone. The plan right now is for her to live at her parent’s house. She would have in home care, and receive therapy at the house. We all agree that this will probably be the best thing for Karen’s recovery in the long run. However, I want to make sure everyone understands, particularly those of you who haven’t had an opportunity to visit Karen recently, that even though she is going “home” Karen has a very long, long way to go in her recovery.

I have mentioned before that Karen in currently experiencing, among other things, severe pain and swelling in her left leg due to blood clots. There is no immediate danger for them traveling to her lungs, because she had a filter placed in her main vein. However, this is hampering her rehabilitation efforts, causing great discomfort, and pretty much making things miserable for her. It’s amazing she keeps the positive attitude that she does. It is also prolonging the time until we are going to see her walk again.

They are telling us now that it could be anywhere from several months to over a year before Karen is able to walk again, but they do believe she will do it. I prefer to believe it will be the sooner timeline of course, but the point is it will be a long time and we have no way of knowing exactly how long it will be. This is a little disappointing for a lot of us though, since we all know how much running, swimming and biking were a major part of her life. All we can do now is help her with her rehab and make sure that she remains positive and doesn’t get discouraged.

It’s also important for me to deliver the following message. A great deal of Karen’s care will now fall on the shoulders of her dad. I think now is the time for all of us to be prepared to pitch in – again for many of you, with some of the duties. As the Rehab Team explained to us today, even though Karen is likely to get more acute care at home, since she is not competing with other patients, that care comes primarily from her dad since she will be living with him. Ken will need some relief almost daily to deal with other things, and frankly to get a break from caring for Karen. We will be devising some sort of scheduling mechanism in the coming weeks to track a schedule of visitors, rehab sessions, doctor visits, etc., so we can offer Ken the relief he both needs and deserves, as well as the stimulus Karen will need after staring at the two of us every day. We’ll keep you posted.

To all of you who have helped out already, paid a visit, sent a card, sent money, or donated leave, we couldn’t have gotten this far without your help. Thank You.

I also want to give a very special thanks to Steve Teslik. He set up the blog from the beginning, and has been maintaining it ever since. All I do is write the posts. He takes care of all the rest. It has been a valuable source of information both from the viewpoint of me delivering it, and from those reading it. --- Thanks Steve.

(P.S. Actually Paul, speaking on behalf of Karen's community of friends, 'thank you!' for allowing us to be a part of Karen's personal trials, recovery and successes. Furthermore, it's the least I can do as being a geek comes naturally :-)

posted by Karen's Blog @ Wednesday, June 14, 2006 2 comments

Paul's Update: June 9th at 2:30pm

Karen continues her daily routine of therapies, and she has been working very hard since her mother’s funeral services. As many of you were aware we were able to take Karen to the services. Karen fully understood what was going on and frankly surprised her father and I with the degree to which she both understood, and wanted to participate.

Even though she still gets a little confused about the timing and sequence of events, we are sure she still fully understands what has happened. She seems to be handling it as well as can be expected.

I want to thank Missy and Martha for helping me with everything in getting Karen to the Chapel. I simply could not have done it without them. I also want to thank all of you for coming to the service. I know it meant a lot to all of us, especially Ken, Karen, and Eric.

In the last week since my previous post there have been a few changes. It is clear to me that Karen’s mental capacity and intellectual thought have improved. Her sharp wit and intelligence are more apparent every day. She does continue, as I mentioned earlier, to have a bit of trouble connecting a timeline of events that have occurred, often mixing them up in order. She is also very stubborn if you call her on it, insisting she is right. Sound familiar to anyone?

Her physical rehabilitation continues to be of concern. She still has significant pain in her left arm and leg due to some clotting. The pain and the swelling have hampered her progress in this area simply because it hurts her to do some of the exercises. We are hoping that this all subsides soon, so she can get the maximum benefit out of her therapy sessions. We all want to see her walking on her own as soon as possible. And I think the person who wants that more than anyone else is Karen.

I know she gets a little down at times when she is limited in what she can do, and gets very disappointed at the prospect of not being able to run again any time soon. If you have an opportunity to visit with Karen and the subject comes up, please be as positive as you can about the prospect of her resuming her running activities soon. She seems to take comfort in the idea that is “definitely going to happen”.

She still is sporting a very hip and funky haircut. The “peach fuzz”, as I like to refer to it, is slowing growing back. I’ve tried to talk her into the Sinead O’Conner look for the rest of her head, but she isn’t buying into it.

Keep the cards and pictures coming. She reads and looks at them all.

posted by Karen's Blog @ Friday, June 09, 2006 1 comments

Karen & Judy Rasmussen: June 1st, 11am update

Karen seems to be recovering well since her surgery. Thankfully, she has returned from the surgical recovery floor at the hospital to a room on the 5th floor’s rehabilitation wing. She has already begun rehabilitation sessions again. We have been noticing increased movement in her left foot and greater alertness these days. However, sadly there has been a development in Karen’s life that may have a significant impact on her recovery in the coming days. We are hopeful that the impact is only temporary to her recovery progress, but are aware this will be a very difficult time for her.

As most of you have known, Judy Rasmussen has been battling lung cancer for over four years. Unfortunately, Judy lost that battle earlier this week. Karen was informed of her mother’s passing Wednesday morning and took it as well as could be expected. She seems to have understood it all, and is obviously very sad about it. Hopefully, with the help of friends, family, and the wonderful people at Mount Vernon Hospital she will come through this difficult time without any major setbacks.

The Rasmussen family has made funeral arrangements with Everly Wheatley Funeral Home in Alexandria (1500 West Braddock Rd, Alexandria; Ph 703-998-9200; click here for web link, click here for map). There will be a viewing Thursday evening at the funeral home from 5-8pm.

The memorial service will be held at the Belvoir Chapel (enter Tulley Gate from Rt 1 and proceed on Pohick Rd; special note: permanent ID required) on the Ft. Belvoir Base just south of Alexandria on Friday morning at 11am (click here for Ft. Belvoir web link and general directions). I have attached a map and instructions to the Chapel (click here for "pdf" version - approx 2.5MB or click here for the "jpg" version - approx 1.2 MB; see below for "text" instructions).

The family has asked that in lieu of flowers a donation be made to Karen’s Medical Fund (see sidebar to the right for information) in memory of Judy. Karen will be attending the funeral services along with Ken, her brother Eric and myself. We are hopeful that all of you who are interested will be able to attend as well. There will be snacks and beverages available at the chapel immediately following the service, however Karen will be returning to the hospital once the service has concluded.

We apologize to many of you who are just finding out about this, but we hesitated to spread the news of Judy’s passing until we were able to safely inform Karen about it. We did not want Karen to find out about it from anyone but Ken. We also wanted to consult with Karen’s doctors to ensure there were no negative effects in Karen’s condition if we didn’t do it right.

If I may, I’d like to take a moment to express my condolences to Ken, Eric, and the rest of Judy’s family and friends. In the last two months I have gotten to know both Ken and Judy quite well as a result of the many hours we have spent together watching over Karen. Like the rest of us, Judy was devastated by what had happened to her lovely daughter. Possibly even more so, given her own unique circumstances. Judy’s main concern quickly became Karen’s welfare not necessarily her own, ensuring Karen receives the very best care available, and that she recovers fully from her injury. I know she truly wanted to see Karen through to victory. Unfortunately, she won’t be here to see it, but she can rest knowing that Karen is in good hands, and has many friends and family like all of you who have helped, and will continue to help us in the weeks, months, and years ahead. Judy will surely be missed by all of us. But, I feel fortunate to have had the opportunity to get to know her better in the last two month. If only it had been under much happier circumstances.

Text Directions to Belvoir Chapel: To gain access to the base, you must enter the Tulley Gate from Route 1. This entrance is located across the street from the Hess gas station. Once you have entered the base, proceed on Pohick Rd. This will bring you all the way to the Belvoir Chapel. The Chapel will be on your left hand side at the intersection of Belvoir Rd. Also, as of June 1st, visitors can proceed directly to the vehicle search area. While in the vehicle search area, visitors will be required to produce a permanent form of identification, such as a driver's license, DoD identification card, or Common Access Card, before proceeding on to the installation.

posted by Karen's Blog @ Thursday, June 01, 2006 2 comments