if i were queen of the world

early last year, i wrote a post in which i briefly mentioned this blog.

i don’t know how many of you followed the link, if any. i don’t know if any of you grew to love and care about this family, the way that i have. it all started here. follow that link, and you’ll find a letter written by a guy named daniel. he’s a smart guy. he’s a very well-written guy. he’s sensitive, the way that nearly anyone who can write well is. but, in this letter? he’s just a dad. and a husband. he’s a worried and drained and terrified man who’s trying to find a way to tell his very small daughter that her mother has cancer. i went back and re-read that letter before i started putting this post together, and i still can’t read it without crying. but, you know what really gets me? it’s the overwhelming sense of hope that hovers around almost every word.

i think that’s what drew me in to this family’s story.
i read every word they were willing to put down, and i tried to send my own hope toward them, through the computer screen.

today, leanne is healthy. against all odds–really, people, if you need to feel inspired, go read her story–she is healthy.*

the thing is, it wasn’t the hope that i sent their way making it’s way to colorado and out of their computer screen.
so, what was it?
it was a new experimental drug trial. a new experimental drug trial which cost about ten million dollars.** a new experimental drug trial that SAVED HER LIFE. a new experimental drug trial which will probably go on to save a whole lot of lives.
maybe mine, one day.
maybe yours.

if you’re interested in the specifics, here’s a little piece of an email from daniel that details some of the different drugs that leanne tried:

the name of the drug was epratuzumab.
it was a trial out of the mayo clinic.
in order to get on it, we had to terminate the pregnancy, which was hard.

hat’s not why we did it, per se, but it was one of those benefits, ugly
benefits.

who knows if it was that specific drug that took leanne from stage 4 cancer
to basically remission 5 weeks later.

it’s weird stuff.

i’m sure it helped.

it’s really the other drug that she was on (rituxan), which was in trials in
the 80s that has ended up making some lymphomas really easy to treat at
times. epratuzumab is in the same family as rituxan. they both actually
can identify the white cells that probably have cancer in them and mark them
to be killed. it’s amazing stuff. like personalized medicine.

and that’s always been the hard thing about fighting cancer – that cancer
cells look so much like our regular cells (they just grow out of control).
so…the chemo usually just goes in and kills EVERYTHING – which, of course,
is dangerous to our bodies. but these new drugs like rituxan and
epratuzumab tell the body exactly which cells to kill.

rituxan was a trial drug too (they all are at some point),
but i’m sure that fundraising for the rituxan trials back in the 80s and 90s
saved thousands of lives, just like epratuzumab might in the years to come.
rituxan has been used on over 1,000,000 patients now.
In a large clinical study recently, 69% of patients receiving RITUXAN plus
chemotherapy were surviving at 2 years versus 58% of those receiving
chemotherapy alone. And that’s probably not as impressive as it’s been.
Many people with aggressive lymphomas have upwards of a 90% survival rate.
That’s amazing.
That’s not like cancer, that sounds more like tetanus or rabies or something
like that.

anyway, the thing is: TRIAL DRUGS, THEY ARE IMPORTANT. WE CAN HAS SOME NOW?

last year, daniel biked a hundred miles in a team in training event for the leukemia and lymphoma society. together with a few friends who offered to bike with him, he raised over 35 thousand dollars for research into cures for blood cancers.

it was a lot easier last year, i guess, when leanne was sick.
this year, leanne’s not sick.
this year, only one person donated money toward daniel’s ride.
one person.
the thing is, there are a lot of people who are still sick. and a lot more people who will become sick.
like i said above, it might be me, or it might be you.
and, really? let’s just throw it out there: it’s not just about being sick, it’s about dying. seriously. when leanne was diagnosed, her chances were far from good. she is alive because there are doctors and scientists out there trying to find new ways to save lives, and because there are people like daniel who are willing to bike one hundred miles in one day to help raise money to support the efforts of those doctors and scientists.

do you have five dollars?
do you have two dollars?
do you have fifty cents?

i’m serious, if you have fifty cents that you can spare in your checking account, then click here and donate.
sure, there are buttons there that ask you to donate certain amounts–the majority of them are FAR out of my budget–but there’s also a little button that says ‘other,’ and it allows you to enter in your own donation amount.

please don’t NOT donate because you think it’s stupid to give one dollar.
it’s not stupid. rather, it’s beautiful.

and, if you do decide that you can spare a little something? please leave a message in the comments section of the donation page saying that you came from here. i’m going to do a little raffle with the names of all donations who came from here, and the winner will get a little prize.

if you can’t donate right now, don’t worry.
i still love you!

maybe instead of donating (or, in addition to donating) you could share daniel and leanne’s story on your own site. who knows? maybe one of your readers will want to do something to help. times are tough, i know. i paid $4.20 a gallon for gas today, and i was right pissed off about it. still, there’s something we can do. that’s the beauty of the internet, right? we can spread the story around. if enough people hear it, maybe daniel can raise as much money as he did last year. maybe he can even raise more…

after all, this is the guy who writes the words saturated with hope.

*the most concise version of the story can be read here. it’s the written version of a speech leanne gave to the participants and supporters of last year’s century ride, in lake tahoe. if you have time for nothing else, you MUST read this speech, and daniel’s account of the bike-ride that accompanied it.

**this is an estimated monetary figure. but i remember this one time when i went to the ER, and they gave me some motrin, and on the bill it said that the motrin cost $32. for ONE FREAKING MOTRIN. so, you know. cancer drugs are pretty expensive, i imagine. and it’s probably even more expensive to, like, create cancer drugs that don’t even exist yet.

Filed under: blogging, i'm scared of things. lots of things., life, the universe, and everything. on May 29th, 2008