Welcome!
We built this site to help journal and share Charlie “Crash” Pageler’s journey to defeat Pleuropulmonary Blastoma (PPB) cancer.
There are three main sections to this site, an About page detailing our journey to the eventual diagnosis of PPB, a Journal section that includes updates on how Crash is progressing (and how mom and dad are doing), and finally a Photo Gallery.
We will use this site as a way to share our experiences and progress as we help Charlie defeat this disease. It will contain the good and the bad and the ups and downs. We have built-in functionality allowing visitors to comment - please feel free to do so. This is a scary disease and it will take a collective effort in order to defeat it, which we have every intention of doing.
Recent Journal Updates
Holiday Update - Turning the Corner
We often talk about how appreciative we are of all the support we receive. But that is often at the end of our posts, when frankly it should be the lede (yes, that is the correct spelling in this instance). Whether it is the full “suite of care” we receive at Yale, or the visits from family, friends, and neighbors, or the genuine offers to lend a hand, or the food deliveries that are providing a layer of protection against the coming winter, or just the occasional check-ins we receive from everyone - including the amazing nurses and hospital staff at Yale and current and past colleagues, this journey has been made so much more tolerable by the support we feel and share with Charlie.
Post Surgery Pathology Reports
Despite multiple return trips and stays at the hospital due to post surgery infections/fevers we continue to have encouraging news from an ultimate prognosis perspective. The pathology results have come back on the resection (tumor removal) and they are very encouraging. There are three classifications of resection - R0, R1, R2. R0 means that all the discernible cancer was removed - including tissue analyzed microscopically. R1 means that all of the visible cancer was removed but there are some microscopic bits left on the tissue still remaining in body.
Wait, what? We Are Home!!
Yesterday we got another chest x-ray to determine whether we could pull the chest tube and instead we got some discouraging news. His upper lobe had gotten much smaller since just after the surgery. Lots of big words were used to describe the possibilities - the only word I heard was “collapsed.” To the surgeons it didn’t seem like it was leaking, and it didn’t seem like there was pressure (fluid) smooshing it, so the thought was that the airways leading to it were clogged/congested.
Ladybugs and Ice Cream
What a day. Pain team came in first thing in the morning, asked how he did overnight (fairly well) and said ok, time to remove the epidural. Wait, this was what we were lobbying for but now that we were going from 60 to 0, we were having some second thoughts. How would we manage his pain? What if this were too fast? But pain team was resolute and the idea of getting the drugs out of his system (and another tube out of his body) was too compelling so 5 minutes later he was freed.
See all Journal Entries
Recent Gallery Images
See the Full Image Gallery