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:
Karen,
It is soooooo good to hear from you! Glad you got the opportunity to enjoy your own place for a few hours.
Keep up the excellent work! You are doing great :)
Amanda
Karen, you look fabulous! I'm so happy to hear you're doing so well. :) I think of you every day, and look forward to blog updates. It's nice to relax at home, isn't it? I'm so glad to hear you're headed home soon!
Paul, thank you again for all your hard work with the blog, we all appreciate it.
With love,
Lisa
aka LisaBadger
Karen, I'm so glad you got to go home for a while and enjoy being there. It sounds like you had a very special Fathers' Day. Keep up the great work in therapy. I have a feeling when I come back in August (I hope to come back then) that you'll be miles ahead of where you were when I saw you last week. (running pun intended.) :)
Here's a big cyber-{{{{{HUG}}}}}
Karen...Wow, you are looking good. I just got this blog address today and was able to read over all the posts. Nancy H has been keeping me posted up until now. You seem to just keep getting better and better.
Keep up the great work. Good luck.
Amanda B.
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