Dear Family & Friends,After a couple of weeks of not so intense pain, Barry’s shingles-related pain on the back of his scalp and left side of his face came back with a vengeance, escalating over the last week and culminating with an admission to Stanford Hospital on Sunday night.He is being treated by an excellent team of pain doctors, along with the BMT team for his transplant, which is not affected by the shingles. He is starting to have some relief, but is quite loopy from the drugs. When he is awake, he still can exhibit his own inimitable brand of humor. He will be in the hospital until sometime next week. Fortunately, his treating physician, Dr. David Miklos, is the attending this month, so we have seen a lot of him.

Meanwhile the transplant docs are pleased with his progress. The first real test will happen on Friday, when they do some extensive blood work to see how many of his blood cells are his and which are the donor’s (it’s called a chimerism test). We won’t get the results until sometime late next week.

Many of you have asked how I am doing, and the answer is that I am really doing ok. I feel grateful that I can be his caregiver, and that people at my job have been so supportive. The support of family and friends, that would be all of you, has been awesome as well. I want you all to know that we have received all of your packages, emails, cards and voicemail messages. I would love to respond to each of you individually, but it is really too hard for me. I just don’t have the time or the psychic energy. Please don’t be insulted.

Barry, when he is lucid, or as close as he ever gets to lucid, has been posting to his Web site, www.agauchepress.com. I am sure that once he comes out of his stupor, you will find some chuckles there, as well as his take on the transplant process.

We have been very moved by all of the people with cancer in our close community. In addition, we were particularly touched by the death of Ed Bradley, who had the same disease as Barry, Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia (CLL). We have seen Bill Walsh daily at the Cancer Center as well. He does not look good. It’s all cancer all the time. We feel like Barry is the lucky one. He got diagnosed early, we found excellent docs here at Stanford, the Campath treatment put him into remission so he could have the transplant, and a well-matched donor was easily identified. If not for the shingles, we might be dancing.

Much love to all,

Bonnie