Karwoski Life

Ok, so I’ve been bad and haven’t posted for a while…SORRY! You can see that I did write one last week, but just never got around to getting it online before now. Things have been so busy that I have struggled to find time to sit down and write. But, here I am at last!! Let’s start with Christmas…it Christmas was wonderful and we had a great time visiting with our families!! We were blessed with wonderful gifts, company, and food! Thanks to a few friends and my mom, we had plenty of yummy cookies, candies, and treats! We are so spoiled! Christmas Eve we spent with my parents, sister, brother-in-law, and niece. We enjoyed time hanging out, snacking, and playing with our little Meghan. We also had our first official OUTING that night…to our church’s Christmas Eve service. It was so good to go and see the warm, familiar, and loving faces of those who have faithfully held us up in their prayers for so long. We received many warm hugs, hearty handshakes, and well-wishes. It was ...

Well, here we are all snuggled in bed on our second night at home…and things are going great. We spent the day hanging around the house…Matt worked on catching up on all his hot rod magazine reading while I baked cookies and cleaned up the house. We are starting to settle into things together here and I think we’re going to do just fine. We had a visit from a home health nurse just to check in on everything, and to see if there was anything they could do to help us out. Turns out, we won’t actually need anything from them! We practiced the shower again this morning with the tub bench, and Matt did really well. I originally thought it could be helpful to have another person there when he was showering, but it went so well this morning that I don’t think it will be necessary. I know that as time goes by we will just get better and better at it. The nurses thought we were doing great and wished us well. As it turns out Matt doesn’t begin his outpatient therapy at Penn Ave until next Wedne...

Blessings for the day: Our weekend at home went WONDERFULLY!!! We got home early in the afternoon on Saturday and had a great afternoon. After a while, we decided to try the basement stairs! We took our time and got down the stairs safely in one piece. In physical therapy, we had been practicing stairs with the railing on our right side (as if we were going out of our house), so it was a little trickier going down the basement stairs which has a railing on the left side. We had to sit down on the steps a few times to rest…but after a few tries, we finally made it. We walked over to his recliner and he spent the rest of the evening relaxing in it! We ordered a pizza and watched a few movies…including National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation (which we LOVE)! It was a great evening! We made our move upstairs around 9:00 or so and had no trouble at all. He got all ready for bed, got up in there, laid on his tummy, and snuggled in for the night. I think he actually slept better than I ...

Well, I am sitting in the living room while some workers are installing some extra insulation in our attic and am attempting to fill the time with something productive. I figured I might as well try and work on a little update for you all. This is the first morning in over three months that I haven’t been up early to greet Matt and help him get ready for the day. I am anxious and uncomfortable not being there to help start his day, and I hate that I can’t just call him up to tell him I’m running late. (They got here an hour later than expected) He knew I’d be down there later today, and was ok with it…and I know they are taking care of him there, but I just feel uncomfortable not being there as usual. Plus, of course, today is the big overnight visit, so I’m sure he’s just dying for me to get there and get him HOME! I will definitely update you all on how the trip goes. I took the entire day off work yesterday and was with Matt throughout all his therapies. It gave us another ch...

As usual, time is just a flyin’ by these days! The remodel here at Younker was the big news of the weekend…it is really beautiful, that’s for sure. Matt’s new room is very nice and state of the art. He has a nice view out the window of the courtyard park. He also has a huge bathroom that we can wheel him into and use really easily. Tomorrow he will practice showering again with the physical therapist here in our room. He’s getting lots of practice for when he goes home. Our trip home on Sunday went really well. We practiced walking to the bathroom and eating at the dining room table. He and I did pretty well together, but he still has some work to do. He has agreed to work his booty off this week to try and get a little stronger for the trip home. The therapists are also having me work with him more in therapy to help get an idea of how we are working together and give us any tips to help out. They have a really nice new gym here at Younker with a mock bedroom. We practiced ...

Just a quick note to let you know that Matt has moved rooms. They completely remodeled Younker's rehab unit on the fourth floor of the Younker building. To get to his room, you use the same entrance and elevators. Go to the fourth floor again, but when you get off, go left. Stay left and his room is Y420. It is about 1/2 way down the floor. I'll write more of an update later! :)

Time is just a flying by these days - I can’t believe in just 11 days Matt will be going home for good. We are both so stinking excited! Matt has been doing so great, that they have actually arranged for him to go home on another day pass tomorrow. We’re going to practice some normal day-to-day maneuvering around the house to see how we do. Then we’ll spend the rest of his time here at Younker perfecting those things to ensure that we’re comfortable and capable of getting things done around the house together. I’m fairly confident in our abilities to work together as a team, but it will be good to try things in our normal home environment. Matt will also get to go home overnight next weekend, just to see how we’re doing and to make sure if there’s anything we need to do to the house, we have time to do that before he comes home to stay. He’s so excited that he’ll get to come home twice more! All of Matt’s therapies have continued to go really well. They set weekly goals for him...

Blessings for the day: Well, our big, BIG blessing is that God truly does answer prayer. I have felt it time and time again, but never as much as I did today. Let me back up a little and explain just how awesome God is…on Tuesdays, the therapists, nurses, and doctors all get together and review Matt’s progress. This past Tuesday, they all talked about how great he was doing, how much progress he was making, and how much more progress they thought he could make if he stayed at Younker for a while longer. They even talked to my insurance company and found out that he could stay longer, as long as he continued to show improvement. In their eyes, this was a great opportunity…in Matt’s eyes it was not. They thought they could send him home for one night over Christmas weekend, and then keep him here until the 30th. Well, he just couldn’t see the point in coming back for only one extra week. We thought long and hard about all the options, but ultimately it was Matt’s decision. He was...