Don: Wow! They let Karen out on day 19. Time line for this trip to Gainesville is that we got here on April 29, checked in on Friday and had two days of chemo and 5 days of radiation and received the bone marrow transplant on May 7. They like to call that your new “birthday” and that would be day zero, the next day was day 1 and so on. Today is day 20. They let us out yesterday but the Internet connection is having a lot of trouble at the moment. I have no idea when this message will really post to the site because I have just lost connection again.

We have been here 4 weeks today and if you use their statement that Karen must stay in Gainesville until Day 100 then she should be able to go back to Bay County on August 15th. I don’t know how much arriving at that number is science, how much magic and how much is statistics but that is the target they have given us. Maybe she could head back sooner and maybe it will be later or they might have it exactly 100 days before we leave. Sooner would be nice because I was granted Medical Leave of Absence for a little shorter time period than that.

The main thing we wanted to let you all know today is that Karen is doing very well compared to the normal time frames. She has recently had some small bumps in the road and doesn’t feel perfect but we measure everything on what she has been through so far and are really pleased with how it is going so far. She has been down more than up this passed week so she really needs to work on building muscle in her legs and her stamina in general but I could not be more proud of the effort she puts in trying to make it happen. Prayers and contact from all of you really help a lot and we thank each of you who have taken the time to let us know you care. More information to come later. Maybe even a note from Karen!!