Paul's Update: Aug 30th: Karen's Post Surgery
According to the doctor who performed the surgery it went well. Karen is still in the hospital, but we expect she will be released to go home in a day or two. I will let everyone know when this happens.
Essentially, what the surgeon did was to remove the blood clots that had formed on the outside of her brain. He informed us after the surgery that there were both newly formed and older clots, but he believes he had gotten them all.
Karen is sporting a stylish new bandage on her head that I refer to as her turban. She also has a new haircut, but we haven’t had a chance to see that yet, and won’t until they remove the bandages. Karen is getting a little antsy being confined to a hospital bed, and understandably she is anxious to go home.
Hopefully, she won’t have to endure anymore surgeries, and can quickly get back on her road to recovery.
Paul's Update: Aug 28th - 9:20am; Karen's Surgery today
Saturday marked two very important milestones in Karen's life. First, it was her birthday. In order to avoid catching Karen's wrath, I won't disclose her age. It was a wonderful day to celebrate Karen's life, and the joy she brings to ours. Karen thoroughly enjoyed it. For those of you who were at my house on Saturday, thanks for making it such a happy time for Karen. She has been talking about how much she enjoyed it over and over again since that day.
Thanks go to Kristin, and Jill for giving me so much help in preparing and putting the whole thing together. I also want to thank my brother John and his wife Maryanne. I don't know how I would have been able to do it without your help.
And thanks to all of Karen's wonderful friends who took the time to visit with us, and to battle the heat and the hoards of flies. I don't know where the flies came from, but I can assure you they we not invited.
The second milestone for Saturday was that it marked exactly five months since Karen's injury. to those of you who have had a chance to see her and visit with her lately you will agree that her progress is nothing short of extraordinary. Each day we see more and more of the Karen we all remember.
It's hard to believe it has been five months since that horrible day. For me, they all seem to run together sometimes.
There were the early days when we thought she wouldn't make it, and the days when she made terrific leaps forward. We've watched her progress from barely being able to sit up, to where she is today, which is on the verge of walking on her own, unassisted.
Throughout this time we were told by all of the doctors and therapists that it would be a long, long road to recovery, and there would be some bumps in that road. We have seen several with the clotting in her legs and arms, the hydrocephalus, and others.
Unfortunately, late last week we were presented with another bump in that long road. Karen has developed some clotting in her head as a result of the shunt that was put in back in the spring. According to the doctors this is not too unexpected, and does happen to patients from time to time. However, they believe it is the likely cause of the persistent headaches that have been troubling her in the last couple of weeks, and they also believe that it needs to be corrected right away.
So, late this morning
Karen will be admitted to Mt. Vernon Hospital again, and will undergo surgery to remove the clots from her brain. If all goes well, she should be out of surgery in a couple of hours, and will spend about three days in the hospital. After that, she will go back home, and hopefully pull through it just fine. Then, she can continue with her therapy, will be relieved of those pesky headaches, and continue to impress us with her amazing progress.
I will provide you with additional posts tonight and this week as the information becomes available to keep you all informed.
Reminder! "Karen's Run" on Thursday Aug 31st!!!
Just a reminder that Karen's running club, the Northern Virginia Road Runners Club (NOVA) is hosting a 5K run & 1 mile fun walk for Karen's benefit. As of this writing, approximately 50 have signed up -- so it'll be quite the event! Note that all proceeds will be donated to Karen's Medical Fund.
As for the course, it's flat & fast starting at Bluemont Park on the W&OD trail. There will be food/drink after the race along with random prizes.
Click
here for the race flyer with further details. Contributions above and beyond the registration fee are welcomed. Note, you can go to the NOVA web site (click
here), click on "NOVA News" and register over the net via Active.com. See you there!!
Paul's Update: Aug 11th at 7am
It has been a pretty good week with Karen, so I thought I would give a quick update. She goes everywhere with her walker these days, and rarely uses the wheelchair now, especially when she is at home. This Tuesday, many of you who were there to see that Karen attended the weekly gathering of her running club at Genereous George's. Although I wasn't there, I heard from Eric and Deborah that she enjoyed it immensly and was rather keyed up when she got home. In fact she didn't want to go to bed at the usual time. She couldn't stop talking about it the next day, and kept telling me how wonderful you all treated her that day. I am sorry I missed it. It was the first outing in which she didn't even bring her wheelchair with her in the car. Earlier in the day she had a doctors appointment too, and used the walker to get there as well.For those of you who were there at Generous George's, thanks for making it so memorable for her. I think you will agree that the little movie that was included with my last post is quite outdated already, and that was taken on July 25th.With this progress, not all improvement is with her motor skills. Karen's mental condition is improving as well. She gets a little feisty at times, but hey, that just means she's getting back to normal. We try to do a crossword puzzle together most evenings that I am there, and I can see the improvement there too.Karen does get bored sometimes when she is confined to the house so much.This is understandable, and one of the reasons she enjoys visitors. So, please check in to arrange a visit.
"Run for Karen" 5k & 1mile - Thurday, August 31st, 6:30pm
Karen's running club, the Northern Virginia Road Runners Club (NOVA) is hosting a 5K run & 1 mile fun walk for Karen's benefit. All proceeds will be donated to Karen's Medical Fund. It's a flat/fast run starting at Bluemont Park on the W&OD trail. The race will have food/drink after the race along with random prizes. Click
here for the race flyer with further details. Contributions above and beyond the registration fee are welcomed.
Note, you can go to the NOVA web site (click
here), click on "NOVA News" and register over the net via Active.com.
See you there!!
Paul's Update: Aug 2 at 2pm
“It’s been four months now since Karen’s injury. The video speaks for itself (click
here for video), and although it is brief (approx 30 seconds), it shows how much Karen has improved. She has even progressed since these pictures were taken. She can walk from one end of the house to the other with very little assistance from anyone, and very often she will opt for the walker rather than the wheelchair when going to the bathroom, the living room, or to bed. Given her continued progress, will believe she will be transitioning to out patient therapy within a few weeks.”
(Note: The video is approx 10MB-30 sec in length, so download time for those with 56K modems is approx two to three eternities; All other connections will be less then a minute. Also, the video is in "mov" format, which is an Apple Quicktime/iTunes application. If you don't have this on your PC/Windows computer, you'll need to go to the Apple site and download the software -- approx 30MB. This may be a good idea in that any following videos will be in this format)
