February 11, 2013

Giveaway with an Ulterior Motive

It’s time for a giveaway here at It’s Just Life but I have to be honest. I have an ulterior motive. I am fully disclosing this up front. You see—the month is almost half over and my comments are not where I would like them to be. If you have followed me for any time you know that I have a Comments for a Cause on my blog and for each legitimate comment during that month on any post (heck–it could be on a post from 2008 for all I care!) I will donate 50 cents to my cause. This month I am hoping to make a nice donation to the Tom Hedin Medical Expense fund. If you want to read more about Tom and why he has a medical fund you can click right here and a new window will open up with a link to my first post about Tom and his wife– my blogger friend Nina. (The short story was that he was in a very bad snowmobiling accident.)

Tom is on a long journey to recovery. On Thursday of last week he moved to another facility for more intensive rehab. The move was not easy as he was feeling pretty comfortable with the care and routine he had gotten into at the Glencoe facility but it is what the “team” thought was best for him. Nina, his wife, posted the following on his CaringBridge site:

I won’t sugar coat it; the past two days have been a struggle.

New faces, new routines, new expectations, new challenges. The Courage Center is nothing like our sleepy little hospital in Glencoe. This place is BUSY. Tom has a roommate, every meal is scheduled and you have to eat in the cafeteria, and therapy sessions start right when they are supposed to. They run a tight ship!

Although Tom has some major misgivings about being placed there, I am still pretty confident that this was a good choice. The staff at the Courage Center contacted the Dr’s at HCMC immediately after our admissions interviews with questions about his care; questions that mainly went unanswered before. Yesterday morning they took off his knee brace and bandages (for the first time since surgery), cleaned his leg up and removed the sutures. They also removed every other brace (which hasn’t happened since they were put on) to give him a good scrubbing. He really appreciated that! Sounds like they will be getting him into a shower soon, too.

They are still formulating his care plan and goals. Things should settle into a routine once the week starts. Monday we have a followup appointment with his orthopedic Dr; let’s hope that all those fractures are healing up speedily.

So for now, Tom is ‘giving it a few days’. We made a deal and if he is REALLY that miserable there, we will apply to other rehab programs. Of course I hope that he can tolerate his new surroundings, heck, even learn to appreciate the opportunity. Time will tell.

Now on to the Giveaway! Below is a picture of all of the lovely surprises that could come your way if you are the lucky randomly chosen winner.

So far the contents are as follows:

a delightful Deep Vanilla scented candle from Soyphisticated Candles
a new favorite of ours—a container of Livia’s Season Salt ( a nice blend of kosher salt, coarse black pepper and garlic salt)
a box of a variety of Harney and Sons teabags
a set of 4 binder clips from WakuWaku (great little artistic clips to hold your important papers together)
a set of 4 coasters (may be different from above picture in colors)
6 handmade greeting cards
an It’s Just Life limited edition mug
a Monkey Farts lotion bar from SoapArt,LLC (Yes–you read it correctly–smells like bananas!!!)

So far that is what is in it but by the time the Giveaway is over on February 28th there might be more goodies added to it!!!! All sent to the lucky winner for just commenting on THIS post. A lot of you are great commenters and for that I thank you. What I would love would be if you guys would share this post via Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc. so that I can get a lot of comments for Tom and Nina!!!! Let’s push this over the top, people, and in the process have a great prize at the end!!! I am counting on you to share!!!!

Thank you from the bottom of my heart and remember that the comments that will qualify have to be on this post —otherwise I will get too confused and you know it doesn’t take much to get me confused these days!!!