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:
Ken and Paul,
I will continue to pray for you to have the strength necessary to help Karen through this next transition.
Karen, I pray that you find comfort in returning home. I pray that you continue to receive the very best care possible and are up on your feet in shortest amount of time possible. Keep up that positive attitude. Your spirit is so strong.
God bless you all,
Amanda
P.S. Steve, I don't know you, but thank you for providing this service for Karen's community of friends and family.
It was so good to finally be able to visit you, Karen. I hope you were able to sense how much love and good wishes I was carrying with me from all the Runners World forumites. I didn't know until I got home from our visit that you may be going home in a few weeks. That is wonderful news. Keep up the good work with your therapy. I know it's slow going but just like I told you Wednesday, I do believe you can overcome this and run again.
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