Karwoski Life

Just a quick update…(well, I say that now, but once I start typing who knows where this will go). Things are going well with Matt’s eye and vision. We went to Iowa City yesterday to follow up post surgery. His eye is healing well and the tilting that he was experiencing does seem to have been fixed. He still sees double, which is made worse by the bouncing he has in his right eye…but they were able to take some measurements and attached some temporary prisms to his right lens. This prism should help bring the two images together, the rest is up to Matt’s brain. Can he fuse them together? Can he overcome the bouncing in the right eye? These are the unknown questions. For now, he is trying out the prism to see what he can do. We’ll go back one more time towards the end of February, just before he leaves for China. It is our hope that the treatments there might help alleviate the bouncing and help merge the images once and for all. We’ve seen some major changes up at the new hou...

First...a few pictures... This is the tile in the hall bath: This is the master bath: This is the foyer: Now that we’re all settled in for the afternoon/evening, curled up watching a movie (Matt picked Back to the Future) with our blankets, I thought I’d take a few minutes to write another update. This week has been a long one, filled with the usual ups and downs and I am very grateful that Principal has decided to give us Martin Luther King Day off as a paid holiday so tomorrow I can have another day to rest and catch up on things around the house. Matt’s eye is healing nicely, and after several days of hopelessly blurry the vision, things are finally starting to return to normal. Even though this surgery was only on Matt’s left eye, it was sorer than any of the previous surgeries, so Matt was down for the count most of the week. While Matt still sees double, the tilting of the one image has been resolved! Matt and I are hopeful that we are definitely on the right track for resolvi...

Well, we survived our trip to Iowa City. Matt’s surgery went well, though it was a long and tiring couple of days. We had appointments on Monday to get all our ducks in a row for the surgery, including meeting with the surgeon for one last set of measurements and discussions. Dr. Olson is really a great doctor who truly takes his time and explains things to his patients. I can tell he really wants the best possible outcome…for Matt, not for himself. He explained that because Matt can’t really look up very far, they are trying to correct his vision while he’s looking straight ahead and down a little. When Matt looks through the top of his glasses the two images are lined up next to each other, with one a little higher than the other. But as he brings his chin up and looks through the bottom of his glasses, the images come together and overlap, but one of them twists off at a different angle. This twisting/tilting/torsion, is what we were attempting to fix with this surgery. Befo...

Happy MID-JANUARY!! I can’t believe how the time is flying by…I think I’ve probably written that several times over the course of writing this blog, but holy cow sometimes I can hardly believe how time keeps on whizzing by. Just thinking that it has been nearly two and a half years since all of this craziness began is incredible. To think of all that we’ve experienced, all the friends we’ve made, all the changes in ourselves, our faith, and our spirits, all the places we’ve gone (some again, and again), all the many, many blessings which we’ve received…it’s just been an amazing couple of years. I can’t say enough how fortunate I feel to have had the wonderful support of friends and family, whose love and encouragement have helped brighten my darkest days. Without you, I would not be the person you see today…I could not have made it through this experience with as much hope and optimism. Knowing that our lives have influenced others, that we have encouraged people to hold their lo...