Light the Night Walk

On November 12, I, along with 14 other walkers on my team (team #fLOUrish) and their kids in tow participated in the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society's Light the Night Walk event. The goal of the Light the Night Walk is to raise awareness of blood cancer and raise money to fund treatments that are saving the lives of patients today. Every walker gets to have a lantern- supporters walk with red lanterns, survivors walk with white ones, and those carrying yellow lanterns symbolize remembrance for loved ones lost due to cancer. I signed up for this walk many months ago because I wanted to be involved in LLS and give back to the community as a token of appreciation for all their support during my journey. I didn't do much in terms of fundraising but as the event drew nearer, more and more people found out about it and signed up to be part of team #fLOUrish to walk with me. We went from having a team of 4 people to 17 people in total! My personal goal was $500 and I set our team goal at $1,000. I figured I could easily get to $500 and if others signed up, $1,000 should be fairly easy to attain. Little did I know that we would blow that goal right out of the water. In fact, not only did we more than raise the $1,000, as a team, we raised over 12 times that goal and ended up with just over $12,000 in total funds raised! This was rather suprising considering just two days before the walk, we were just under the $5,000 mark in terms of dollars raised. A whopping $7,000 came in on the last two days thanks to the great efforts of my team and reaching out to their network of family and friends. I ended up raising about $2,700 for myself, more than half the amount came in the last few days too. It just showed to me how everyone was so supportive of my journey, regardless of whether they knew me or not. The $12,105 total meant that our team came in at #3 in terms of dollars raised out of 225 teams! We surpassed the total of many corporations, including my very own Wells Fargo!

The route for the San Francisco walk was around AT&T Park. I really enjoyed the Walk as I had many of my close friends and supporters around me and because we had lots to celebrate. It really was a special night as I had a lot to be thankful for and lots to celebrate given that I had just gotten the results of the clean scan and was just about near the end of my chemo treatment. ABC7 News was there and they took a team pic of our group which made it up on their website. Here's the link: 
http://abc7news.com/society/photos-abc7-news-at-light-the-night-walk-in-san-francisco-/1082063/#gallery-3  (I ran into an old college friend who works for them and I think she probably had a say in what pics to use!)

Thanks again to everyone for their kindness and generosity in making the Light the Night Walk a success and one that I will remember for a very long time.

 

 

 

It's All Clear! It's All Clear!

I got my PET scan results today and...it's all clear! There is no sign of the tumor anymore in my abdominal area (see lower pic)! I must say it was a huge sigh of relief. My oncologist showed me the before and after pictures and the black mass that was around my abdominal area is completely all gone in the latest pic. The only black that showed up was in the kidney but that was completely normal as that was my urine.

My oncologist also showed me something else that the radiologist and him found "interesting". It appears that there is some "activity" in my right kidney-- the kidney that they originally had stated was no longer functioning because of the tumor blockage. Where there used to be a black mass (because it was completely "dead"), it was all clear again and a minute trace of "activity" or urine passing through (see top pic). So, there is still hope that I may regain a bit of function back in my right kidney!! This unexpected bit of good news was like the cherry on top to the already great news that my tumor was gone after only four chemo sessions!

He said that because my scan came back all clean, there was no need to scan me anymore after my treatment is over. This is because he'd rather not put undue stress on my body by doing any unnecessary scans (he stated that one PET scan is like getting 100 x-rays). I asked  him what about follow up scans 6 months from now or a year from now. He said he recommends against it because for the same reason that it exposes the body to radiation and in some cases (5% of patients) can cause second cancers. We will just do the normal regular 3-6 month check ups and draw blood to see if anything is unusual.

The only thing left to do now is to get a bone marrow biopsy to see if the cancer is also gone from my bone marrow but he said we won't do that until after my treatment is over, so most likely before Christmas (my last treatment is December 4). But he said that he also expects the chemo treatment to be effective on the bone marrow as well and he expects that it will be negative. But of course, being the doctor that he is, he did hedge it that we are only taking a small section of bone marrow (my pelvis) and while it could show to be negative, there could be traces of it in other parts of bone marrow. This is probably the only part I don't like about him- he states just the facts too much and doesn't want to give me too much encouraging news! My wife was there for the appointment and she saw first hand how emotionless he was as he was going over the results! Haha. Nevertheless, it was a GREAT day today. What I worked so hard for the past few months, going through treatment and staying positive has all paid off. My tumor is gone and if not for my bone marrow, he would have declared me in complete remission!! This was the best case scenario possible and the fact that I may have some function back on my right kidney was an added bonus to this awesome early Christmas present!

Now, it's just two more sessions to go and I'll be all done! It'll be time to celebrate very soon and I'll be able to even drink to that after my treatment is over. Good thing we just built a custom wine cooler and cabinet at home. Time to stock up on that red wine... hehe.



Before pic on the left and Friday's scan on the right. The black
tube is my nephrostomy bag. The black on the right is my kidney
but that's normal. The mass that was on the left is all gone.

The Waiting Game

Today is the day before my PET scan and to say that I'm not anxious would be a lie. I get scanned tomorrow morning to see how much the tumor in my abdominal area has shrunk. However, I won't know the results until Monday afternoon when I meet with my oncologist so it's gonna be a few more days of waiting patiently. I am hoping for the best results possible-- that the tumor will be all gone or only some traces of it left and the two remaining chemo sessions I have left will kill off anything else. My oncologist is hopeful that this will be the case so I'll just have to keep thinking positive thoughts. I will update everyone as soon as I know.

I haven't updated this blog in over a week as the scan has preoccupied my mind and also because I've had a few relatives visiting me from Australia to check on my well-being. My support network reaches far and wide from Australia to Hong Kong, Thailand, Singapore and Malaysia and it's great to know that even thousands of miles away, I have people thinking of me and rooting for me.

When my uncle and cousin were here, we just spent a lot of family time together catching up. As most people know, I spent my childhood years in Australia and still have a lot of family back there. I try to go back every 6-7 years, the last time was in 2012 when I took the whole family there. My son learned to walk while he was in Adelaide!

When my extended family get together, they always talk about the "old days" of living in Cambodia and growing up in Australia. This is how they reminisce, much like how my high school friends and I always talk about the good old Aragon High days when we get together. My uncle provided some insights about me that were really thought provoking. He said that I have three lives. I've faced enormous challenges in my life and now I'm facing another big one. The first one was when I was born. The doctor dropped me upon delivery leaving a bloody gash in my head (this may explain a lot of things about why I am what I am today). Everyone thought I wasn't going to make it but somehow, the wound healed and I survived. Guess I was just too stubborn to go away that easily and that thick-headedness that people know me to be was born at birth! The second life was surviving the Killing Fields. My uncle and mom said that during the war, I would go into the rice fields at night to steal rice grains which my mom would grind up to make me porridge soup. I must have been only 4 then because I don't remember much at all but this is what they said I did in order to have food to eat. I guess I was lucky that I didn't get caught or anything as they would have surely beat me to death had they found out. The third life of course is now and trying to beat cancer.

I guess what my uncle was trying to say is that I'm a survivor. Not that I would want to be compared to a cockroach, but I guess I am sorta like one in the sense that no matter how tough life has gotten, I've found ways to survive. You can't kill me off just yet! I've got too many things to live for-- my kids, my wife, my family, and my friends. These are all good things worth surviving for and for that, I will continue to stay strong and positive and beat this thing.