We've been home for a few days now. We are all just starting to get back into our routines. Karen hasn't had any major improvments since we got back just building on the small ones that she noticed shortly after the procedure. Karen now has warm hands and feet and her voice is noticably stronger when she's speaking. These are the two main changes that we have all noticed. We will try and keep everyone updated through the blog.

We spent most of the last couple of days around the hotel just resting. Sunday we took some cabs to a mall near our hotel for a couple of hours. Monday was spent resting for our very long day of travel on Tuesday. The driving in Bulgaria is much faster and less controlled then it is in Canada so it made us less willing to travel further then walking distance. We are leaving in a few hours so I will add a few more pictures to finish off the posts from Bulgaria.

We've kind of figured out how to post pictures they are lacking titles so from top to bottom they are us arriving at the hotel, Karen with the doctor's that performed the procedure, the Tokuda Hotel Sofia, the view that Karen had from her hospital room, a picture of one of the mountain ranges near the hotel and hospital, the Greenville Hotel where we are staying, and the ambulance that picked Karen up at the airport and brought her to the hotel.

We heard that some people are having trouble posting comments. If you want to get a message to us you can send an email to reid.fam@sasktel.net or lbr764@mail.usask.ca or jill_reid_94@hotmail.com. We will definitely get these messages. We appreciate all of the messages that we do get. It makes us all feel like you guys are here with us and makes everything so much easier!

Karen is back at the hotel! She was discharged from the hospital around noon today. Everything is going good so far. Everyone is very tired and spent most of the afternoon resting. There's nothing more to update for now. We're going to try and do some touring for the next couple of days so I'm sure there will be plenty of stories to share from that.

The Liberation procedure was performed!!! At about 8:00 last night they came and took Karen down to have the procedure done. She was back in her room by about 9:oo pm. If everything goes as planned she should be out of the hospital before dinner on Saturday. So far there were some small changes nothing big yet though. We will keep you all updated to improvements!

Today has been eventful, Karen had the ultrasound around 9:30AM local time (12:30AM SK time). The results showed a great deal of blockage in both jugular veins - which is good news at this point. It means that they will definitely perform the procedure! The procedure will likely be done tomorrow and out of the hospital the next day. Posting pictures has been more difficult than excepted, so look for pictures on Facebook later on today or tomorrow.

We arrived!!! We landed in Sofia at about 2:00 pm local time which converts to about 5:00 am in Saskatchewan. We couldn't update earlier because of delays in internet connection be we fixed that problem. Karen checks into the hospital tomorrow morning at 9:30 am and will have the ultrasound testing done to see if she has ccsvi. If she does have ccsvi which is pretty likely she will have the liberation treatment done later that day or early the next. We will update more tomorrow when we have more details. Hopefully some pictures too!

The trip is almost here!!! There was an overwhelming show of support from hundreds of people Saturday night at the Benefit dance. This support is what is important to our family. We just wanted to say a huge thank you to everyone that came out to the Benefit. Another thank you is owed to all of the wonderful people that planned this benefit for our family and Tammy's. While we are away we will do our best to update the blog every night so that everyone can follow along in Karen's progress.

We've been getting a lot of questions about our flight times so I thought that I would post them here for anyone who is wondering. We fly out of the Saskatoon airport on September 15th at 10:30 which means we need to arrive at the airport at about 8:00. We are scheduled to land in Saskatoon at 5:30 on the 21st.

It's two weeks now until we leave! Everyone is starting to get excited. We have all been following stories of people who have had to procedure and returned home. All of the stories that we have heard are of nothing but good news and stories of improvement.