I am one of the first few people to take an effective dose of Gleevec in the Phase 1 trial (then it was called STI 571) at UCLA. I swallowed my first Gleevec pills 10 years ago on April 19, 1999. I call it my REBIRTHday because it gave me my life back.
It is hard to believe it has been so long since I took those first pills. When it became obvious that this new drug was working as well as Dr. Druker thought it would, it was like stepping out of the darkness of despair (interferon and death in 3-5 years) and into the light of hope. Dr. Sawyers at UCLA was obvious in his delighted reaction to what was happening. It was truly miraculous. In the process of all of this I got to meet and interact with dedicated and brilliant scientists such as Brian Druker, Charles Sawyers, and Neil Shah. (I know there are many others but these are the people I personally got to know well.) This in itself changed my life. I learned that the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society played a big part in supporting their research and my volunteering for the Society and my fundraising has given me new purpose in life. When I was diagnosed in 1997, at any given time there were about 30,000 people living with CML. Now we can all celebrate that there are over 100,000 and that by 2010 that number will probably be up to 250,000. Life is good! Virginia Garner I'm training for another marathon and fundraising to help find a cure for cancer. Click here to help me: http://pages.teamintraining.org/los/rnrseatl09/virginiagarner --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ [CMLHope] A support group of http://cmlhope.com ------------------------------------------------- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "CMLHope" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/CMLHope -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
