The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society Team In Training

Email:
Phone: 909-596-4309 (home) | 909-519-2630 (cell)

After a year of debilitating treatment and at the edge of death’s doorstep, I was very lucky to participate in a study for a new drug that wound up changing chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML) from a terminal disease to a chronic one that is controllable. When I was diagnosed 12 years ago, patients with CML survived for 3-5 years while they endured treatment every day that devastated their bodies. Now, with Gleevec as standard treatment, all I have to do is swallow 5 small yellow pills every day to live a normal life with my family and friends. Now, instead of blood transfusions, staggering fatigue, persistent nausea and infections, I can run/walk marathons. While only 30,000 CML patients were alive at any given time when I was diagnosed, because we are staying alive and not dying, there are presently over 200,000 people surviving and living full lives, an astonishing figure considering that 10 years ago a CML patient’s prognosis was at best five years.

When I found out this miracle was made possible by research funded by the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, I signed up for my first marathon with Team in Training 10 years ago so I could return some of the goodness I had received. When I told my husband I had signed him up too, he exclaimed “You signed me up for WHAT????” to which I replied “I have leukemia, are you going to turn me down?” Crossing the finish line not only for myself, but also for others, in that first L.A. Marathon in 2001 was one of the most amazing and triumphant accomplishments of my life. I became addicted to the good feelings I get when I help other patients through working with Team in Training, and now I just completed the Mayor’s Half Marathon in Anchorage, AK, my 10th with Team in Training. I plan to keep on doing this until I can no longer walk! I want to be a part of helping others like me.

As Mission Captain and a leukemia survivor, I desperately want you to know how awesome you are for helping. Most of us know about the research grants, but I will also share with you many other programs that patients (including me) and their families are helped by on a day-to-day basis that you are making possible! I will also keep us all posted on our sweet honored teammate, Tyler and his family.

I am living a miracle every single day and appreciating every moment as it comes. Gleevec has put me in what they call complete molecular remission, meaning that there are no detectable leukemia cells in my bone marrow. If I stop taking my pills, however, the disease will return. I knew I had to wage the battle of my life during that first year after my diagnosis. What I didn’t know is that I had an entire army of people, Team in Training, fighting for me, too. You, my beloved team, are my hope for an even better miracle – a cure. And you are the hope of thousands and thousands of other blood cancer patients who don’t have a magic bullet like Gleevec. If it weren’t for Team in Training, I wouldn’t be alive today and there isn’t a day that I don’t give thanks. It’s like a fellow CML patient once said “I feel that we are sitting on top of a mountain looking over at the other side at that most precious state of being – alive and well and free of fear. I dream of that day.” Know that you are making that dream come closer and closer to coming true!