Chuck Earnst

As many of you know Chuck starting fighting is second battle with Lymphoma 10 months ago. Since he was not a candidate for a bone marrow transplant the doctor recommended (initially) 4 rounds of an intense chemo regimen. Each treatment consisted of receiving 5 days of chemo in the hospital, roughly 2 weeks recovery and then another treatment. His oncologist then recommended that he should do 2 more treatments since that was the equivalent of the bone marrow transplant. After the 5th round, it was very hard for him to bounce back. His platelets ended up dropping as well which made his recovery that much more difficult. They decided to wait a little longer to do the final treatment. When he was almost done with his final treatment he started to develop a cough. He went home and soon became very sick. My mom took him to the ER and they admitted him, diagnosing him with RSV. At this point his immune system was so compromised by the chemo that he could not fight off the RSV and he fell sicker each day. Sunday he was moved to the ICU and placed on a bipap breathing machine for his body was so weak that he could not breathe on his own. Within what seemed like hours, he was unresponsive, his body was so tired and he was fighting for his life.