HE Lights the Night

"Walk as if your life depended on it, because someone's life does!"

"Walk as if your life depended on it, because someone's life does!"

 2011 RICHMOND LIGHT THE NIGHT WALK 

Thank you so much for your generous support in previous years. I have just celebrated five years as a cancer survivor since being diagnosed on May 11, 2006 with Chronic Myelogenous Leukemia, and many of you have walked this journey with me.

The Light The Night Walk is The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society's annual fundraising walk to pay tribute and bring hope to people battling cancer. Hundreds of thousands of participants raise funds for lifesaving research and patient services. It will be held in the Richmond, VA area on Saturday, 10/22/2011 starting at Albert Hill Middle School in Carytown. Money raised by the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society in events like this was directly responsible for the research used to create Gleevec, which is the cancer treatment I take daily.

This will be my 5th year supporting this walk, and I encourage you to help out my team "HE Lights the Night" in one of 5 ways:

1. Donate money to the cause (also check with your company about matching contributions). You can donate on our team site here.  Click the link on that page to make an online donation, or, if you want to send a check rather than donating online, please make out to the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society and send to my home address: 6110 Topping Lane Glen Allen, VA 23060.

2. Join my team via this site (A "Join Our Team Now" button is at the very bottom of the linked page) and help raise money for the Walk. Every dollar matters!

3. Simply show up and walk with my team on Saturday, 10/22/2011 starting at Albert Hill Middle School in Carytown, Richmond, VA. Click here to join the event on Facebook.

4. Volunteer at the Walk.

5. Pray for the success of the cause!!

Please join our team's effort today. Your participation in the Light The Night Walk will help save lives. Please continue to ask me about how the efforts are going or about others ways you can help. I would love to talk to you about it. Be sure to check our website frequently to see our progress, and again, thanks for your support!

Thank You!

Bobby Wright and the "HE Lights the Night" Team

Thank You

Today I celebrate 5 years as a leukemia survivor. As I reflect back, I want to take a brief moment of your time to thank each of you for encouraging words and prayer over the years as I have managed this disease. With the grace of the LORD and incredibly effective medication, my day to day "battle" now is simply each day saying a prayer of thanks and taking a pill that suppresses a protein in my body that causes the cancer. Though I still deal with continual side effects to the meds, the cancer cells in my body are so minimal at this time that my diagnosis is that of having achieved a "complete molecular response" to the medication.

Yet even as I celebrate my triumph, a young friend of mine lost his battle last night to cancer, bringing to mind a clear reminder of how precious each day of life is.  So as I mark this milestone in my life, I encourage each of you to celebrate your family and friends today, take a clear look at where you stand in relationship to GOD,  and continually offer up encouragement to others who may be dealing with health issues of their own. Sometimes just a kind word brings someone victoriously through another day.  

I Timothy 1:17 "Now to the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen."

Thanks again.

Romans 8:14-21 

"¹⁴ For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God.

 ¹⁵ So you have not received a spirit that makes you fearful slaves. Instead, you received God’s Spirit when he adopted you as his own children.  Now we call him, 'Abba, Father.'  

¹⁶ For his Spirit joins with our spirit to affirm that we are God’s children.  

¹⁷ And since we are his children, we are his heirs. In fact, together with Christ we are heirs of God’s glory. But if we are to share his glory, we must also share his suffering. 

¹⁸ Yet what we suffer now is nothing compared to the glory he will reveal to us later. 

¹⁹ For all creation is waiting eagerly for that future day when God will reveal who his children really are.  

²⁰ Against its will, all creation was subjected to God’s curse. But with eager hope,  

²¹ the creation looks forward to the day when it will join God’s children in glorious freedom from death and decay."

Popping some toxic pills

I was slightly amused to notice that on the most recent batch of meds I received last week is a sticker that warns "Toxic.  Dispose as a biohazard."  Now usually one avoids toxic things; however, I pop a "toxic" pill daily, and am usually very thankful for it.  In case you didn't know, I was diagnosed with leukemia almost five years ago and have been on this medication all this time.

I usually receive a three month supply by mail about the time I am about to run out, but in early April my supply ran out and nothing came.  Turns out there were insurance changes and a new type of approval was needed this year. Now I am very thankful for insurance as each pill without insurance costs about $300. As I take one $300 pill a day, do the math over a year and it gets unaffordably pricey.  So we jumped through hoops to get approved, but this put me off meds for 17 days.

Now Lisa can attest that when I am off only a couple days, I get violently sick when I go back on, vomiting and pain and just feeling crappy.  So I was nervous about what would happen after 17 days.

I asked my small group at church to pray and faithful that they are, they did. And God answered with a beautiful blessing.  When I went back on meds last Friday night, I had not one bit of sickness.  The normal side effects are back, but none of that gut wrenching vomiting that I hate so much when I react poorly.

So, I am thankful for my biohazard, toxic pills. They are a blessing from God.

Chronic Myeloid Leukemia research still needed

Ahh well.....another article that is a good reminder that although there is good treatment for CML (Chronic Myelogenous or Myeloid Leukemia), there is still no cure.   Keep supporting cancer research!   I am thankful that God has provided skilled and intelligent researchers who may someday figure this thing out.  One day there may be a cure!

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New Approaches Needed for Treating Chronic Myeloid Leukemia

Published: Monday, December 13, 2010 - 14:41 in Health & Medicine

Chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) was transformed from a fatal disease to a chronic condition by the development of a drug known as imatinib, which targets the protein that drives this disease (BCR-ABL). However, imatinib does not cure patients, they must take the drug lifelong, as disease recurs if they stop taking it. This is because imatinib does not kill all the CML cells; some, which are known as CML stem cells, persist.

A key to therapeutically targeting CML stem cells is knowing whether they rely on BCR-ABL to persist. Answers to this will determine whether more effective BCR-ABL inhibitors are likely to be effective treatments or whether new approaches to targeting these cells need to be developed. A team of researchers, led by Brian Drucker and Michael Deininger, at Oregon Health and Science University, Portland, has now shown clearly that human CML stem cells do not depend on BCR-ABL activity for survival and are thus not eliminated by imatinib therapy.

As noted by the authors and, in an accompany commentary, Alexander Perl and Martin Carroll, at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, the data indicate that therapeutics targeting BCR-ABL will not improve CML treatment and that new approaches are needed if further advances in patient care are to be made.

Richmond Light the Night Walk 2010

Last Saturday night was the annual Richmond Light the Night Walk, which raises money for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society.  

 

When I was diagnosed with Chronic Myelogenous Leukemia back on May 11, 2006, things changed forever.  For awhile I wasn't sure how to become involved in helping others with this disease, until one of my nurses told me about the Walk.  Since then, I have raised money and walked for 4 years, organizing my team "HE Lights the Night", which gives glory to the fact that only through the grace of God can anyone be healed.

Saturday's Walk was in Carytown and due to a lot of conflicts, only Patrick and Nicholas walked with me this year.  It was an awe-inspiring sight to walk down Cary Street, which had been blocked to traffic, with thousands of others carrying a lighted balloon.   White balloons are for survivors, red for supporters and then gold in remembrance of a loved one who did not survive this horrific disease.

It's a night of encouragement for all who have been affected by blood cancers, and I encourage everyone to get involved in this inspiration event!

Bobby Wright's 2010 Light the Night support site