Summer Fun Continues

Karen's doing great. It feels like we are packing a lot into the summer and having a great time doing it. Last weekend we took the kids to a fairground for example and Ethan & Sydney enjoyed their first rollercoaster. As Ethan(2) said "my heart was going faster and faster". My own was not far off. We will write more about our adventures in future posts. Tonight I want to share a small way in which readers of this blog can help cancer research through Protein Folding.

What is protein folding?
Proteins are biology's workhorses -- its "nanomachines." Before proteins can carry out these important functions, they assemble themselves, or "fold." The process of protein folding, while critical and fundamental to virtually all of biology, in many ways remains a mystery.

How is folding linked to disease?
When proteins do not fold correctly (i.e. "misfold"), there can be serious consequences, including many well known diseases, such as Alzheimer's, Mad Cow (BSE), CJD, ALS, Huntington's, Parkinson's disease, and many Cancers and cancer-related syndromes.

If you'd like to learn more about Protein Folding visit Stanford University's page here: http://folding.stanford.edu/

How can I help?
Download the Folding at Home application from here: http://folding.stanford.edu/English/Download

This application runs in the background and downloads small packets of data from Stanford, performs some analysis on the data and then sends the results back to Stanford.

Will it slow my computer down?
No. The application runs entirely in the background on your PC's spare cycles, time the PC would otherwise be idle.

Ideally you could put it on every machine you have access to (office/work PCs are GREAT for this, especially if they're left on all night).

Do I have to register?
No. But you should put in the Team number for KarensCancer which is "144824". This will link your machine's work to Karen's team and we can track how much analysis has been completed as part of this effort.

Whilst this will not help Karen's case directly, the analysis may help researchers better understand what causes or contributes to cancer and other related diseases.

3rd Chemo (of 4) & Camping

After a wonderful break camping in PA, Karen's back in chemo again. Today she had her 3rd treatment of CPT-11 since the last scans. As you may recall Karen gets CPT-11 every 3 weeks and Erbitux every week. She's having some "toxicity" to the Erbitux and so was given a break from that this week.

The CPT-11 is causing slurred speech and so the treatment was stretched to 5 hours instead of 3. Despite the slower IV, Karen got extremely nauseous and experienced some gagging and dry-heaving. Some heavy anti-nausea meds were added to the protocol and a big bag of fluids. All-in-all we got to the hospital at 9AM and left at 5:30PM.

As I mentioned we had a really great few days away with the kids. We chose to rent a cabin and didn't rough it too much. The trip included stroking a frog, waking a butterfly, feeding some goats, an underground cave, a trip to the Zoo, the Science museum, swimming, paddle boats and a beautiful sunset. The kids did great and it was terrific to spend the time with them and share in their fun.

I'm traveling on business this week from Tuesday which is not great timing. Karen will have her sister Sarah as company. As with all chemo weeks, we hope the week goes quickly.

6th Erbitux and The Circus

Karen's doing well. We awoke the other day to find this huge oak on down after some high winds. Amazingly hardly any damage done our neighbor's house.

Don't see that every day.

Karen's at Overlook today getting her 6th does of Erbitux. She's tolerating it despite severe dry skin on her hands and some bad skin cracking and rash etc..

Yesterday was a great day. I took the day off and Karen and I took Sydney and Ethan to the circus. I don't have many pics as they didn't allow flash photography. Here's a couple we snapped off before being scolded.

As it turns out I had actually worked with two of the clowns in the circus and knew them from a previous life. I hadn't seen them in about 14 years so it was quite surreal. The kids had a terrific time and loved every minute of it. I think by the time the show was over they were ready to pack of and join the troupe.

This coming Friday is Good Friday and Karen will be getting chemo + erbitux. On Sunday I am traveling to London for a brief business trip but will be back Wednesday night to help out.

It was a lot of fun to go out as a family and we are aiming to plan many more such outings over the summer.