Eric Drew, Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia, Leukemia Fund




	Eric's Status Eric is working to update this page. Please read The Eric Drew Story for the most current information to date. Thursday, July 22 2004: Deepest respects to Judy Schram (42 years) and her family (three young girls) who are away in the hospital room fighting like hell to hang on to her life in the room next door to me in the hospital room next to mine here in Minneapolis. I hope the pebble of HOPE I gave them made some sort of difference. To Jeff Chen and Scott Martin, friends whom have also passed away recently after fighting with everything they had, leaving behind a family scorched by pain and bewilderment. The sadness and loss is so immense that I sort of feel dull at the moment. (11:30pm 0721) To Mike and Rosie’s sister as well, and to John Sanchez, all of whom have touched my life, I have tried to help, and who have passed away like a warm breeze in the night. All the more reason I have to fight, so that they can continue to live, and to fight against the evil people that continue to prey upon helpless hospital patients that the people who stole my ID from the hospital in Seattle not figuring that I would live to fight back. As for me, I am doing fine both physically and emotionally. It is a surreal journey to crawl the walls of a hospital like this, waiting for my body to die so my spirit can be re-booted and given a new tomorrow morning by an unknown baby donor of placenta and umbilical cord blood. (being flown in from Italy) I can tell that I am getting closer to being ready as my urine has turned orange with dead cells and my skin is deep red from the burns of 18,000,000,000 volts of gamma rays soaking my body every day for the past four days on top of ablative chemo. My trip out here with Nicole was a whirlwind, but it was a great time. We drove from Seattle to Spokane, had dinner with friends Rob and Anne Lee and fam, then went on to stay at the Coeur D’Alene resort that night. After a nice breakfast in Coeur D’Alene Idaho, we drove all the way through to Livingston Montana where we met a nice cop who recognized me and let me off of a speeding ticket and gave me directions to the best bar. Heading straight south into Yellowstone Wyoming, we were immediately confronted by Mammoth Hot Springs, where the herds of elk graze under bubbling blue and white boiling mineral flows. That day at Yellowstone we are lucky to see various geysers go off simultaneously including Old Faithful, and my entrepreneurial blood was stirred when I found out that the entire beautifully rustic Yellowstone lodge was closed for the entire winter months. Wouldn’t it be great to open a section of it for exclusive snowmobiling tours with the volcanic activity amongst the Buffalo herds. Yellowstone was something but East was calling so we headed west for Cody WY where we stayed next to the very large and loud Cody Rodeo commemorating Buffalo Bill Cody. The Bighorn mountain range was absolutely breathtaking the next day while Nicole slept, and one we hit the Black Hills I was awestruck by the beauty of Spearfish Canyon outside of Spearfich and Sturgis SD (biker rally). We took the canyon around to Deadwood (HBO show) that still lives up to its name for casinos and western rugged beauty. Friday night on a full moon was a blast and many befriended locals told me what they thought about Wild Bill Hickok and where he was gunned down just inside a casino bar on Main St. The highlight had to be the 4th (actually Saturday the 3rd of July) at Mount Rushmore. I could not think of a better place to give dedication to our most famous presidents and their immense faces carved out of the mountain being shrouded by endless fireworks. I will be attaching a video for all to see. The next day we zig zaged through the Black Hills and visited the Crazy Horse Memorial (very impressive and will be even more in the years to come) saw more buffalo and then headed out to the Badlands. We visited a couple of dinosaur digs and took in the surreal colorful landscape before shooting all the way across to South Dakota to Sioux Falls amongst the fireworks all around. Did not experience much in Sioux falls as there was nothing open on Sunday the fourth, so we drove straight on through Minnesota and arrived early in the evening on Monday the 5th in Minneapolis exactly one week after we started out journey. Since I have been here I have been stabbed, poked, proded, thread with tubes, chemo’d, and heavily radiated with 18,000,000,000 volts per day for four days. My system has now been shut down and I am waiting to re-boot with a new system tomorrow morning at about 11:00am California time. All thoughts and prayers are greatly appreciated, and I love you all very much. My direct hospital number is 612-273-0217. Nicole sends her best wishes to everyone as well. ITS ALL GOOD, LOVE ERIC Tuesday, June 22th, 2004: Hello to all of my family and loved ones, I had been traveling back towards Seattle by car over the last few weeks and stopping to see people along the way. I have had some periods of enjoyment but the decision as to what to do next has being weighing heavily upon me. Now that I am in Seattle and all set to go ahead with another half match transplant with my brother Michael, it has been decided that I need to go through a much more agressive and dangerous procedure in Minneapolis, Minnesota - a cord blood procedure. So the packing and the nightmares begin again. I will have 8 times as much chemo and radiation in Minnesota as I would have had in Seattle, and cord blood is still experimental, but it seems it may give me more of a chance at long term survival than the method here in Seattle. For now, I will be traveling across the country by car with my NEW FIANCE Nicole and playing golf as much as I can. I am feeling healthy right now, so I will try to enjoy it as much as possible before I go in for the #1 fight of my life!!!!! I will keep on fighting. As always, love you, miss you! Eric Tuesday, May 4th, 2004: Hello everyone in cyberspace. I am doing quite well considering all that has been going on. I had an experimental half matched bone marrow transplant in Seattle on December 23, and then went through three months of hell in the hospital trying to get through it. Unfortunately, two days before moving back to the Bay Area to begin a new life, they informed me that the transplant had failed and that the leukemia is back. It seems that this "Philadelphia" chromosome is, so far, impossible to kill in adult ALL leukemia patients without a fully matched transplant. I do not have that match. Even then people are dying from rejection and immunodeficiency. There has got to be another solution that nobody has thought of before. I have a cancer of my lymphoid system, specifically the B cell lymphocytes in my immune system. How can one kill someone's immune system without killing the patient? I am talking to doctors in Germany and Switzerland, as well as the best brains in the US. Life is day to day not knowing whether the cancer is taking over or what to do about it if it does. I am taking a drug from Novartis called Gleevec (Imatinib), which makes you ill in its own right; it has only been proven to hold back the disease for a couple of months, if at all. It is such a weight and burden to carry with me all the time. On the bright side, I am healthier now than I have been since I became sick. I have a bit of fuzzy curly dark hair and can feel most of my legs again (unfortunately not my feet yet). I left Seattle one month ago and have driven over 3,000 miles visiting friends and relatives all over California. I spent some nice time on the beaches in Humboldt, Santa Cruz, and in Santa Barbara. I biked and canoed around a beautiful and hot Lake Tahoe with the snow still covering the peaks. I've spent lots of time with nieces, nephews, and new kids everywhere from all of my family and friends as well as catching up and spending time with everyone I can - it has been a pleasantly exhausting trip. I did take time to go to a golf/spa in Scottsdale Arizona where I rode horses with Apaches on the reservation and learned to rope calves (quite well I must say). During my 8 month stay in Seattle I was not only battling for my life but also battling a severe case of ID fraud. One of the hospital workers who saw me everyday knew that I had a very little chance of living through last year and used my personal information to establish a new "Eric Drew" with credit cards, bank accounts, and government IDs. I knew this was true from the beginning but nobody would listen to me (police, hospitals, FBI, US Postal inspectors, city county state and federal prosecutors, doctors, nurses, the media) They all thought that I was blowing smoke and even if it was true I could never find out who was doing it or prove it. "Just cancel the accounts, file a complaint, and move on or you are going to stress yourself to death" they said to me. Well the calls from banks and creditors demanding money that I had never spent kept coming in more and more each day, and no matter how sick I was I resolved to fight back. After two months of investigating and gathering evidence, crying to news reporters about the situation, and meeting with scary people secretly on the docks of Seattle with tubes running out of my chest barely able to walk, I busted him red handed. I was able to isolate video of the perpetrator buying merchandise with fraudulent credit cards and ID's with his picture and my name. NBC showed it on prime time TV news as the top story and approx 20 people called in right away to identify him as Richard Gibson and an employee where I was being treated. The police went to arrest him, but he went into hiding for three days before turning himself in and getting fired from his job. The prosecutors in Seattle did not even know how to press charges against him as I had all the evidence so they ended up letting him go. This turned out to be a good thing as I had been contacting the US Attorneys Office in DC who had heard of the story and finally agreed to assign me some help. The head Federal Prosecutor in Seattle (Vince Lombardi) called me two days after the arrest and told me that he would be assigning a US attorney as well as at least one FBI Special agent to my case. This could be the first time the Federal government has been able to prosecute someone for violation of the new HIPPA laws protecting patients, as well as federal mail fraud, ID theft, forgery, grand larceny, and many other federal crimes. I am now in the federal witness protection and assistance program and am working with the hospital for them to pay attorneys to help clean this mess up. It has been quite a long ride and it is not over... Sunday, February 24th, 2004: Many of you are wondering why I have been so silent over the last month. Some are angry that I have not kept up communication, and some are worried about my condition. First of all please again accept my apologies, and once you hear about the last month it will make sense why I have not been more communicative. Just after my last journal update, I was taken ill by a rare for of juvenile virus (RSV) known to cause pneumonia in infants. Being only three weeks old myself post transplant, the disease got quite serious and I was hospitalized and in much pain for about a week. It was a horrible sickness that lasted approximately 2 weeks, but I came through without pneumonia due to a special medication for leprosy. When I was released and came to my senses, I realized that the police reports and the reports I had made to creditors back in October that someone had gotten a hold of my information from my medical files and was trying to steal my identity went unheard. The thieves now had several credit cards in my name, bank accounts, ID's, everything, and were going on a nice holiday shopping spree in my name while I was fighting for my life in the hospital. From my bed I spent 10-12 hours per day investigating this case (what address the fraud cards went to- who owns the house - I got pictures - getting descriptions in writing from storekeepers who were robbed - acquiring surveillance tapes - everything. I have phone numbers of the perp's employers and everything. The Police, the hospital, the press, nobody was helping me investigate this case, even though I had originally warned them about this fraud just after I first moved here in October of 2003. I had gathered enough evidence to hand the case to the police on a silver platter, and they still have done nothing. I finally got one of the major news stations to assist me with my story (see www.KING5.com and enter Eric Drew for the interviews). Of course, why would the hospitals help me? It is a multi-million dollar HIPPA violation if my hospital records were to be proven breached (which is exactly what happened - the criminals had no other way to obtain so much of my personal information upon my arrival in Seattle). The case is still unresolved even after I handed the authorities all the evidence they need to make an arrest. It has been a huge nightmare to fight this while being extremely sick and in bed, and has taken all my extra time and energy (not like I had any extra to begin with). Many people tell me that I should let it go and let the police handle it. I did this in October, and look where it got me. All this time the clinic had began what was to be my last series of chemos. Unfortunately, they have to be injected into my spinal column. I had six shots to go and I made the first three without too much trouble. About three days after the third spinal shot (on Valentine's Day) I began to have a serious headache in the evening which quickly spread to a massive attack of cranial and spinal meningitis. I was quickly paralyzed and my mother called for the ambulance as I was screaming in agony and could not move. The amount of pain was indescribable. I cried and begged and pleaded for 5 days for them to do anything necessary to stop the skull crushing pain. There was nothing to do but ride it out. I did not think humans could endure such pain and live to talk about it, but the pain subsided finally on Friday. The doctors have officially called an end to all chemo treatments, and from now on my only focus is getting the transplant to settle in so I can come home early in April. It has been harder than I can describe and several times I have been very close to crossing the line between life and death, which is why I have not been in touch. Now, there is light at the end of this lonely dark and painful tunnel. I love you all, God Bless You for your kind words and support ERIC Monday, January 12th, 2004: Hello Friends and Loved Ones, and future Friends and Loved Ones, which should just about cover all of you. Well I did it!! I have finally had a haploid (half mismatch) bone marrow transplant on the 23rd of December (2 days before X-mas) and am now on day+ 18. Before I give you a summary of the last two weeks and an update on my progress, I want you to know that the transplant is proceeding exceptionally well and I am doing even better than expected in many ways. I say this as it has been a very rocky road and I did not want there to be any unnecessary worries. I had the transplant in the mid afternoon as the docs had to extract 1.6 litres of bone marrow from my half sister Alexa's hips and then put it through a series of processes while they were prepping my body for lots of foreign material. The transplant was simply a transfusion into my bloodstream which took about 2 hours without any complications. They held me for 2 more hours for observation and I was on my way home. Deborah Parente my Yoga instructor and energy therapist from Los Gatos was there along with my parents. About two hours after getting home, my body went commenced into violent rigors (convulsions, shivers and cramps), obviously trying to reject the graft. We were able to calm things down with medications and some hot soup which made me doze off for a little bit. I woke a short time afterward in a sweat with temperatures reaching 104 Degrees F and was immediately rushed off to the hospital where I was kept for 4 days until stabilized and able to take heavy doses very toxic follow up chemotherapy to keep Alexa's marrow from attacking and killing my now very frail system. Oh well, there does another X-mas. I was then sent home to rest while coming in daily for blood and vital sign checks. Nausea, headaches, rashes, and swelling in my legs where my main focuses as they were quite severe. On December 30th my sporadic fevers hit the appointed threshold of 101 and I was back in the hospital for 3 days of observation and IV nutrition and antibiotics. Oh well, there goes another New Year. When they released me on New Year's Day, my blood counts were coming up and I was regaining my strength more rapidly than anyone expected. Then came this last week. My blood counts dropped severely and the chemos and anti-rejection drug side effects hit hard, loosing my hair, taste smell, 20 lbs, and bearing tons of excruciating pain. Feels like someone dipped my legs in a deep fryer, put my head in a vice, burned me with radiation( as they did), stuck a pitchfork in my stomach and will not stop trying to turn it, and hit me with a truck on my right side, (from falling down a staircase due to numb legs). Why does it have to be sooo painful? Anyway, I am tired of lying in bed in pain. I got up today, had a good breakfast, and went off to walk a couple miles from home to the clinic as I really need to exercise. Again, in the grand scheme of things, everything is going well. Therefore it is crucial that I do not focus on the pain as it begins to permeate every aspect of my life. I need to be around positive, cheery, nurturing, and optimistic people only right now, including myself. Love you all very much!! Eric Sunday, December 28th, 2003: I have had my transplant which was performed on the 23rd, and, after 4 days of having 104 degree temperatures with intermittent convulsions I am beginning my long fight back through chemo to get the new marrow to stick. I will be back. Please let everyone know their prayers are not in vain. Love you all, ERIC Wednesday, December 10th, 2003: I hope you all are doing great! It has been one setback after another up here and all of the people they have done this half matched transplant on have now died (12 out of 12). I pray that having my transplant (re-birth) on about X-mas will give me God's strength to get through this. God Bless you all for all the help you are giving me. Hope you can come to visit Seattle soon. Warmest Regards, ERIC Tuesday, November 25th, 2003: Happy Thanksgiving To Everyone! Thanksgiving is in two days and already I am upset that I will miss the "going out the Wednesday night before in Los Gatos" for the first time since I was 16 years old. Everyone please have one for me!!! I was very excited until today; my transplant got put off until next month so I booked tickets for my mother and me to come home next week for a little break (for the first time since I came to Seattle. I got approval from the doctors and everything was set. Today they called me to say that I cannot go and I must begin radiation and chemo again. I just cannot seem to get a break. Oh well, it looks like it will be the beginning of April before I can leave Seattle (unless I sneak away here and there). Love you all, ERIC Sunday, November 23rd, 2003: Thank you very much to all of the people who coordinated, volunteered and attended the Monte Carlo Night fund-raiser to support the Leukemia Fund. The other beneficiaries and I are touched by your giving spirit and your continued support. I regret that I was not medically able to be there myself, but I heard that it was a great success. Thank you all again very much. I don't know how to thank you all as much as I would like to. Currently, on the medical front, everything is on hold since my donor (my brother) got mono. A new sibling is being prepared to be my donor (my half sister Alexa Gregory) and the transplant is now tentatively scheduled for mid December, which was the month I was first diagnosed. One year fighting this disease so far. I long for health and normality. ERIC Monday, November 17th, 2003: Hello everyone out there. I had better give you an update on my condition as things have changed suddenly in the last few days. Basically, I got up here to Seattle for bone marrow transplant that I thought was going to be a 50/50 shot at survival. When I learned it was more of an 85-15% against me due to the impossibility of finding a match because of the mutated chromosomes in my bone marrow from whatever poisoning brought on this Leukemia, I backed out. I wanted to check into umbilical cord transplants, various experimental chemos, and any other option which may give me better odds. Well none of those options worked out and my disease was on its way back, so I made the decision to move ahead with the transplant using the only viable donor which was my half brother Michael in Chicago. My half sister Alexa who lives here in Seattle was ruled out because she is in the medical industry and had shown exposures to certain antibodies, and my only other match, my half brother Don, was ruled out because of a recent trip to Thailand. I was scheduled to start my preparation last week which I did (painful radiation, spinal injection chemo poisons, bone marrow biopsies (core samples) and various intervenous chemos. My transplant was scheduled for the day before Thanksgiving which held some sort of positive milestone or landmark for me to get excited about and shoot for. After going through one week of this torture, everything ground to a halt last Friday Nov 14th at 5:00pm when I was informed that Micheal had contracted Mono and was disqualified as a donor. All of the prep I went through this week was for not. Now I am in Limbo, can't sleep, can't sit still, and can't seem to stop crying. This waiting around knowing my disease is coming back with the docs just shrugging their shoulders is just killing me. I will try to force my self out for a walk in this freezing snowy afternoon in Seattle. God Bless, ERIC Saturday, November 8th, 2003: I love you all very much and miss you terribly. I start radiation conditioning for my transplant this week, and will have two surgeries to prepare this week also. Tired of being so sick, I am ready to fight and get over this, no matter what small percentages that docs give me. Sweet dreams, ERIC Monday, November 3rd, 2003: Recent Events - Eric has been going through chemotherapy since the week of October 26th and has also moved to a new, lower cost, medical housing facility. Between the chemotherapy and this last week's move it has been difficult for Eric to write, but he intends on doing so when he can. In case you do not know, the Philedelphia Chromosome has come back in full force - even after taking the new experimental drug, Geevec. Eric has no other choice but to complete another full round of chemotherapy before they can do the bone marrow transplant. Eric was really hoping to come to the Monte Carlo Night to visit with his friends/fund supporters and still will be there, if at all possible, but he is expects to be in the process of getting the bone marrow transplant during that time so it may be very difficult. We will be giving a full report on Eric's status at the event if he cannot make it. The Fund Volunteers truly appreciate, once again, for your heart felt support. Friday, October 31st, 2003: Hello Everyone!! HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!! Yes, I am still alive and fighting this terrible war that has been declared on my body by itself. It was decided that the best combination to fight off my Leukemia was to take both Gleevec and Interferon (both are types of chemos with nasty side effects). They have kept my Leukemia from "blasting out", but they have not killed the underlying cause of the cancer. (The mutated cells in my bone marrow that cause this rare reaction). Whatever poison I was exposed to must have been very strong to cause this big of a mess in the cellular chromosomes of my bone marrow. Now the only solution is a bone marrow transplant as I am sitting on a ticking time bomb inside me. The problem is that I do not have a real match and nobody has lived through a non-match transplant with my type of cancer before. The closest match is my half brother, Michael, in Chicago, who will fly here to Seattle ASAP to begin blood storage for the transplant. They give me a 15% chance to make it which is a heck of a lot better than 0!! Honestly, I'd rather walk through an Iraqi minefield. Sometimes I feel angry, blaming the industrial machine that seems to benefit everyone, even most the victims (before they get sick). The machine of the medical industry employing millions of people; the pharmaceutical industry selling us billions of dollars in expensive medications; the trillion dollar chemical industry (processing chemicals, preservatives and pesticides); the tobacco growers, the farmers, and food producers who use carcinogenic chemicals and possibly dangerous genetic modifications to maximize their profits. The nutritional supplement and organic food industries who benefit from the fear that people have as cancer becomes even more prevalent and publicized. The insurance companies who justify charging outrageous sums of money that the average person can't really afford to cover costs of treatment and still profit. The lawyers who represent all of these interests and lobby in Washington to keep FDA regulations low so all of these industries benefit. It seems like our society is promoting disease and everyone benefits (until you or someone you know gets sick). Not that there is an organized conspiracy or anything like that. Maybe it is because we are adjusting to moving away from a manufacturing society and the industrial machine is adjusting itself as it needs to in order to live and grow? Maybe the only way we know how to sustain ourselves and our society is to grow (in population and in financial growth)? What are we going to do? Start consuming ourselves by producing more disease so we can build an economy on that? It sounds like "Soylent Green" to me. I sometimes feel like I am being herded through the "machine" with a lot of other patients. The machine is like its own entity, living breathing and growing. How can I not be angry at that? I am going through hell, and I see this machine benefiting from it. How could someone young and healthy like me get such a disease? Many people say that the cause of so much cancer is probably just as much due to the fact that we are living so much longer these days that it is just natural. But that does not apply to me! I am only 36!! Again, how can I not be angry at this industrial machine? HOWEVER, I do realize that holding onto this anger and blame will only take my energy away from where I need it to survive. Like a knot, the more I pull on it the tighter it will get. Release is the only way I will get through this and I know that. Some have even said that I need to release my fear of dying as this alone will take my energy I need to survive. Well, when I do not feel angry, I often feel sad. Sad at the possibility that I may never get to see all of you ever again. The wonderful people who have made up the memories that are my life. What am I saying is that we all know that it will take something with a better name than "Leukemia" to take me down!!! I'm a fighter!!! Lots of Love, ERIC Friday, October 17th, 2003: Hello all of you in cyberspace. Yes, I am still alive and I apologize for not being more communicative. I have always been a fan of the phrase "If you don't have anything positive to say, don't say anything at all". Well, I really haven't had anything great to report. As you may know, the mutated Philadelphia chromosome cells (prelude to malignant Leukemia) were coming back and I went on an experimental drug, Gleevec, to knock them back. Yesterday they took another core sample from my hip bone (ouch!!!!!) to test and see where I am at right now. They will probably start me on Interferon treatments next week (another enzyme inhibitor with more side effects) which should put me into total cytogenetic remission (pretty smart huh?). I have had to become an overnight molecular biologist to figure out how I want to get through this. If you are interested, they do these tests (very expensive) to see if my bone marrow has any bad stuff in it. One is called a FISH test where I think they spread out 1,000 cells and look though an infrared computerized microscope that looks inside cells and scans the DNA for abnormalities. Pretty cool technology! The other is an even more sensitive PCR test - I have no clue as to how that one works. I should do some Internet surfing I guess. Last week I had a few good days and passed out invites for the fundraiser next week "The Luau for Leukemia", but then I fell ill and have been in bed for 5 days experiencing every extreme symptom that you can imagine. Stopping some medications and adding others has thrown my body for a loop, and, on top of that, I got the flu. I Thought I was going to die and honestly wished I had a couple of times (just kidding-but I did feel that bad). I am feeling a little better today, but I am still quite ill. The hemotologists/oncologists (blood cancer docs) seem to be pushing me towards the transplant also. Maybe this is my only shot even though it is a long one? God bless you all. Friday, October 3rd, 2003: Today was the day of reckoning - the last meeting scheduled with the "Lime" bone marrow transplant team at the HUTCH/SCCA. It was the day that my girlfriend Nicole, my Dad, my Mom, the nurses, the docs and, of course, me laid out the options for saving my life. Various types of transplants and some experimental methods were discussed; in each case, all have a very low probability of success. And, THEN I was given an ultimatum. Choose a haploid transplant, or be gone (out of the transplant division anyway). I felt like I was looking at 4 six shooter pistols - all with 5 bullets spinning in them. They will all probably kill me, but maybe, just maybe, one of them might have the empty chamber being the magic "unbullet" that could save my life. Then I figured that this was sort of the half empty glass way of thinking so I moved on. The problem with the new designer drugs and chemo treatments is that they have never shown promise to be a long time cure, but now there is a chemical from Novartis called Gleevec. It works with CML patients, so why not with me? If it doesn't work it could let the cancer multiply to where they will no longer consider me for transplant. Would any doctor in hemotology/oncology even take me and try using these new unapproved drugs? I decided that if I did not at least try the Gleevec and maybe chemo method before a transplant that I may be missing my one chance. I will search for an appointment with a hematologist on Monday and go from there. My cancer (Philadelphia chromosome activated) is at 1% now. Nobody knows at which percentage the white cells start reacting malignantly, but at 5% they will refuse to do a transplant and I am back with severe Leukemia. Having to become a molecular biologist in a few weeks has definitely been quite a task, but making decisions everyday that determine the short term outcome of your life weighs on you after a while, especially when you have time to think about it; just like the soldiers in Iraq that are constantly making decisions that could determine the short term outcome of their lives. I hope they are busy enough not to have to ponder these decisions, but instead have the luxury of responding to these life-threatening decisions spontaneously. I Hope everybody has a great weekend. Lots of Love, ERIC Thursday, October 2nd, 2003: Today was not a good day. I slept until 12:00 noon and was feeling sort of depressed about that. My morning sickness (nausea, stomach problems) were severe today - they did not seem to let up until about 4:00 pm. Anyway, I have these these types of days sometimes. The choices seem so hard to make as each one seems to be like a loaded 6 shooter with 5 bullets in it. Haploid (half match) transplant in Seattle? Umbilical cord blood transplant at the University of Minnesota? Try Gleevec and other mostly benign chemos to keep my cancer in check? What to do? Please God, tell me what path to take! Tonight will be much better with my Dad and Nicole coming to visit for the weekend. Love You All. By the way, I booked my first party here for Thursday, October 23rd. It will be a Luau for Leukemia!! Tuesday, September 23rd: First of all, I would like to thank you all for your undying support. Without all of you I sincerely feel that I would not be here today. As most of you know, I came up here to Seattle to have a bone marrow transplant which Stanford recommended as the only way to save my life from the cancer. Until recently, I thought I had a 50/50 shot at making it if I got the transplant. As it turns out (after speaking to several more professionals) I have come to realize that this only provides a 10% chance at getting through this so I slammed on the brakes and am furiously trying to find alternative solutions. This is not easy to do while I'm feeling so ill, but knowing all of you are out there is giving me the strength to do it. I promise to be better about giving you updates as often as possible. Wednesday, September 10th: Today I will begin the treatment by undergoing a series of tests. Expect to hear more about my progress soon. Tuesday, September 9th, 2003: Eric Drew made his way from Los Gatos, California to Seattle, Washington where he is moving into his local residence at the "Hutch". He was tired from the day and unpacking when we last spoke to him. Eric expressed that he was already feeling sad to be away from home and was missing his comrades and support group. Earlier in the afternoon he had the opportunity to speak with some doctors in Switzerland about his cancer (we will post more details about this later); Eric, as well as his friends and patrons at the Leukemia Fund, aggresively continue to search for any probable cure or drug that might help. Eric will be following up this posting regarding his status via his own journal entries.