Catch up...

Hi everyone, it's Karlin...

Just wanted to do a little post to keep everyone from wondering. Charles has been having a rough couple of days. This is about the time in the recovery process that you start feeling pretty crappy, and Charles seems to be right on schedule with that. :(

As he mentioned previously he's been having pretty bad pain in his throat. This is an effect of the different chemos as well as radiation, and is called Mucositis. It's common, especially with patients who have an unrelated donor. His throat is extremely enflamed and painful. It's gotten worse since the last time he wrote. His pain is at about a 4 when he's resting and somewhere from a 7-10 when he's swallowing, so it's pretty bad. Unfortunately, along with the pain is a lot of congestion. Since it hurts to swallow, Charles is having to use a suction tube to keep the congestion out of his mouth and throat.

Last night he was awake most of the night trying to rid his throat of congestion, so he didn't get much sleep at all. He also can't really eat or drink, so he's really kind of running on empty today. Unfortunately a huge part of the routine here is taking pills, so we've had to find creative ways to get those down ranging from crushing them into shakes, to taking some of them in liquid form. Unfortunately we've learned that some of the liquid medications burn his throat pretty intensely, so we're still trying to figure out what's best to get things down. We are going to try crushing them into applesauce next time around and see if that works okay.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mucositis

All of this going on makes it pretty hard to do much of anything. Even walks are a struggle right now, since he can't take the suction tube with him, but he is such a trooper, still doing 5 laps at a time and doing some of his stretches too.

Charles has also spiked a fever the last three days, which make him feel pretty tired and uncomfortable. The doctors say this is a common reaction and is to be expected. They just put him on a new antibiotic that will help fight the fevers.

So, basically none of these effects are much to worry about, and are just part of this whole process, but that doesn't mean they don't suck. Charles is doing his best at trying to do the things he should be doing, and that alone is amazing. I certainly don't think I would be as calm and collected as he is through all of this if it was me!

Thanks everyone for reading and supporting!

Love you all,
Karlin