How my journey began

Dear “Team Vivian”,

When the new year came around, I made a resolution to focus on my health.  Well, I got a bit more than I bargained for… On January 31st, I was diagnosed with Leukemia and on February 26th, I was admitted to Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia to begin my month-long induction chemotherapy to force the cancer into remission. 

This surreal experience came about from a routine blood test to check my A1C levels and uncovered severe anemia unexpectedly. After consulting with Penn Medicine, Fox Chase, and Memorial Sloan Kettering, I have come to accept my diagnosis of Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML). 

I’m writing now to recruit you onto “Team Vivian” because your encouragement and support will see me through this fight of my life. I am gratefully receiving all your positive healing vibes!

Because a bone marrow transplant is possibly in my future and there aren’t any ideal matches in the donor database at the moment, I’m hoping friends and family and your extended network will register in the database to increase my chances. The doctors have pointed me to NMDP for more information. For the potential donor, it’s basically a saliva swab to see if our HLA typing is a match and then a blood donation for the matched donor (NOT a surgical procedure). If you or anyone in your network is between the ages of 18 and 40, please consider registering to be a potential donor. My match will likely come from someone of East Asian descent.

My bestie, Ting Shih, has kindly offered to help me answer questions in case I get back to people slower than anticipated. If you don’t receive a direct reply from me, please know that I still very much appreciate hearing from you! Ting can be reached at ting.shih@gmail.com.

Sending lots of love and thanks for praying for me.

Vivian (Hui-Wen)