Charles Hudson

Welcome to our CaringBridge website. We are using it to keep family and friends updated in one place. We appreciate your support and words of hope and encouragement. Thank you for visiting.
(PLEASE BE SURE TO READ UPDATES AS NO SURGERY HAS OCCURRED, AND NONE IS CURRENTLY PLANNED)
In September of 2018, Charles was diagnosed with Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia, which is a form of leukemia that the doctors say people generally live with, not die from. In general, the disease did not seem to impact him much until late spring/early summer when the lymph nodes in his neck started swelling. This led him to start a new medication to treat the condition. The biggest issue with this medication is that he must drink a lot of water everyday, and he doesn't like that. Otherwise, everything seems to be okay with that. However, in the winter a place appeared on the left side of his face about the size of a nickel, near his ear. The place was scabbed and just wasn't going away. Longer story, shortened, he did not end up seeing anyone about the place until June 26th, by which time what was thought to be one of the swollen lymph nodes on his neck near his left ear was not getting smaller, but instead was hardening and starting to grow. A biopsy of the place on his face came back as Squamous Cell Carcinoma (unrelated to the CLL). He then had a needle biopsy of the knot on his neck (though a week and a half later than the doctor ordered due to some craziness at the hospital) & it came back that it is also part of the carcinoma. Fast forward multiple doctor's visits and tests later and he is now scheduled for surgery at MCV (VCU Health Center) on Wednesday, August 19th. His surgery will be a MODIFIED RADICAL NECK DISSECTION, RADIAL FOREARM FREE FLAP, TOTAL PAROTIDECTOMY and SPLIT THICKNESS SKIN GRAFT and will take about 8 hours. Due to Covid, there are even more restrictions than normal so no visitors, other than my mother (& maybe me if I go on a day she doesn't), will be allowed, including during the surgery. Regular updates will be posted on this site, so feel free to share this site with anyone you think would like to keep up with his progress.