I didn’t personally know either of them but followed their
journeys closely and blogged abouttheir quest to find a bone marrow donor
match, which is often difficult to do, especially for those of Asian descent.
Nick was fortunate to find two donor matches and received a
bone marrow transplant in early August. And at the beginning of September he
learned that the transplant was working and that he was cancer-free.
Unfortunately, by end of month the situation had changed and the cancer
returned. And today he lost his courageous battle against leukemia. My heart
breaks for his family and my thoughts and prayers are certainly with him, his
family and friends.
Sadly, I haven’t posted in more than two months, but today, I happily have a little free time to write a post. I also had a minute to log into Facebook and it was there that I saw a status update that inspired me to write this post.
Autumn Truong, a friend and colleague of mine, had a Facebook status update and link that caught my attention. She, along with many others, are helping spread the word about Nick Glasgow, 28, of Fremont, CA who is fighting for his life and is in need of a bone marrow donor.
In March, Glasgow developed a sore throat and over the course of a week began experiencing body aches and other symptoms, which then led to him being diagnosed with Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML), a blood cancer. In hopes of going into remission, Glasgow underwent two rounds of chemotherapy. Unfortunately, he is not in remission and is in desperate need of a donor match.
However, finding that match is not easy because it’s like finding a tiny needle in a gigantic haystack. To further complicate the matter, donors have to be of the same ethnic background, and even that doesn’t guarantee a match.
The U.S. Marrow Registry has 6.6 million registered donors. There are 10 million registered donors worldwide, with just over 506,000 of them being Asian American. Ethnic minorities only have a 30 percent chance of finding a donor, whereas Caucasians have up to an 85 percent chance. There is a shortage of Asian, Asian American and other ethnic minority donors worldwide, which is why it is important to spread the word and help close the gap on the shortage of ethnic minority registered donors.
Glasgow is ¼ Japanese and ¾ Caucasian so he needs to find a donor match who is also of mixed Asian-Caucasian descent. The donor pool among Asians is small, but as Glasgow’s friend Stacy Morales said in a recent KTVU news story about Glasgow’s need to find a donor, “it only takes one.” She’s right. And that one person could be you or me.
Regardless of your ethnic background, you could be a match for somebody who is in need of a donor. Get involved and save a life.
Be The Match Marrowthon From June 8-22, The National Marrow Donor Program is having the “Be The Match Marrowthon” where people across the country can register to become a donor at the numerous donor drives happening during the 15-day marrowthon. The process to become a donor is simple, either have a kit mailed to you or attend one of the many donor drive events during the marrowthon. The test itself involves getting the inside of your cheek swabbed with a cotton swab, which is then sent to a lab for testing. If you are a match, in many cases, the transplant itself can be done through blood.
But you don’t need to wait until the Be The Match Marrowthon because Glasgow and many others are in need today, so visit the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society to learn more on fighting blood cancers. For those of you who are of Asian descent, visit the Asian American Donor Program.
This morning in a Brooklyn park a 30-year-old aspiring
model was found hanging in an apparent suicide. Hours earlier he had left what
many are viewing as a "suicide note" on his Facebook status update, which
read:
"...born in San Francisco, became a shooting star
over everywhere, and ended his life in Brooklyn... And couldn't have asked for
more"
Paul Zolezzi used a very public forum, Facebook, to tell
the world that he was here and lived a life in all its glory, but was now
ending it. And then he went out and took his life in a public place. To me,
this hints to him wanting to be noticed and remembered. Something I think we
all want.
Tonight, Zolezzi is clearly noticed because the news of
his suicide spread like wildfire across the social Web.
I first learned of Zolezzi's suicide this afternoon when
I saw his picture and a headline of his death in my stream on FriendFeed. It
linked to a post by Duncan Riley of The Inquisitr.
After reading Riley's post,
I noticed a flurry of other stories and blog posts of Zolezzi's suicide. The
news spread quickly and gained a lot of attention because of Zolezzi’s use of
Facebook to leave his final message to the world before taking his own life.
Social networking sites have become so ingrained in our
everyday lives that it's only natural that a private act like suicide becomes
so public. Zolezzi's suicide is not the first suicide to be associated with a
social network. Just a few months ago on November 19, 2008, Abraham K. Biggs of
Florida committed suicide while broadcasting it live on Justin.tv, a popular
online video site. Biggs was 19 years old.
Death and suicide are never easy and the public openness
of the social Web adds an additional layer of complexity for the families and
friends of Zolezzi, Biggs and any others who have used social networks prior to
taking their own life. And I suppose it even impacts strangers. I know it
affects me, which is why I'm blogging about it.
Any time a young person dies it has an impact on me, but
especially suicide. I am all too familiar with suicide and its aftermath. My
father hung himself 13 years and three days ago -- February 17, 1996. With
every suicide I read and hear about it brings back the night of when I learned of my dad's suicide, just as it did today when I read
about Zolezzi’s suicide.
My heart goes out to Zolezzi's family and friends,
especially his mother. I know that kind of pain and it saddens me when others
have to experience it. Too many of us have, as you can see and hear in this Good
Charlotte music video, which includes others sharing their stories about the
impact of suicide.
Today marks the end of an era with the closing of the award-winning Broadway musical Rent at Broadway's Nederlander Theatre.
Today Mark, Roger, Mimi, Angel, Collins, Maureen, Joanne and Benny took the stage one last time for the final performance of Rent after a successful 12-year run on Broadway.
Those of you who know me really well know that my roots are in theater arts and my all-time favorite musical is Rent, not just because I love musical theater, but also because it represents a time, a generation, a cause, and it parallels aspects of my own life and past.
I write this post today in celebration of Rent. However, it's also a very personal post for a time passed and loved ones lost. And it's about celebrating life everyday because as the song goes "There's No Day But Today."
The first time I saw Rent, I felt like I was watching my own life up on
that stage. I was mesmerized. I was in awe. I was in love. It took my
breath away, but at the same time my heart sank because Rent's creator,
the late and brilliant Jonathan Larson, would have been someone I personally would have been honored to have been friends with, or at minimum, had the chance to meet.
Larson tragically died from an aortic aneurysm after being misdiagnosed (twice) in a New City emergency room. He died the night before Rent's first preview at the New York Theater Workshop and ten days before his 36th birthday. Writer and Rolling Stone Editor David Lipsky described the night Larson died, right after the final dress rehearsal on January 25, 1996:
He (Jonathan) was interviewed by a reporter from the New York Times, who told him off the record that he thought the play a marvelous achievement. Then he went home, put on some water for tea, and died. His roommate found him on the floor of the kitchen, beside his coat. Jon was 35 years old.
It's such a tragic and sad story. After all those years of school, writing and re-writing musicals, and the blood, sweat and tears working on Rent, Larson never got to reap the rewards of his hard work and enjoy Rent’s smashing success. His death was surreal and is still a reminder to us all that there truly is No Day But Today.
Larson brilliantly captured an era and was able to convey a truth that many of us from that time were living. 1996, the year Larson died and Rent debuted, was one of the worst years of my life. That year I went to more funerals than someone of my age should have to experience in a lifetime. I went to ten funerals that year and 2 more at the beginning of 1997. One of those funerals was my own father's who I tragically lost to suicide.
Three weeks following my dad's death, and the first day that I began to feel like I was going to survive the nightmare of his sudden death, I came home to a phone call from one of my best friends, Beth Cortopassi, who informed me that her brother-in-law, and my dear friend, Peter Cortopassi had died that day. Losing him crushed me all over again, and even worse, not being by his side when he died was more than I could bear.
I met Peter through Beth. She had kept telling me that I had to meet her brother-in-law because she thought the two of us would hit it off, and we did. It was a great friendship. We never judged each other and always supported each other, even when we didn't agree with each other or when we didn't like who the other was dating. Our friendship lasted through the good, the bad and the ugly. And it got ugly sometimes, but overall, it's was a friendship that I will always cherish. What I miss most is being able to call him when I'm having a rotten day. He always put me in a happier place. I sure miss that.
Peter was one of the most creative and engaging individuals that I ever met. We had some good times together. He sure made me laugh a lot. In fact, a few days after his services Beth and I were sitting in his apartment in San Francisco still in shock that he truly was gone, even though we had months to prepare ourselves. That final goodbye was never easy to accept.
I sat there that day in his apartment trying to still feel him, wrapping myself in his clothes, smelling his pillow as his scent was still very much on it, and taking in every piece of art that his hands had created when the phone rang. It was a friend of his, who didn’t know that Peter had died, and he was having a bad day and was calling Peter because he said that Peter always made him laugh and cheered him up. I knew exactly what he meant. Peter had that gift. He was beautiful and full of life.
Peter certainly knew how to live life to the fullest (and then some), which is why it was so difficult when his body began to breakdown. After almost a decade of living with HIV, his body could no longer fight the virus and he died on a warm Sunday afternoon in March of 1996.
That year, I went to too many funerals of friends and family and all of them were too young to die with so much life left in them to live. By December of 1996, after the funeral of another friend who also died of AIDS, the ground beneath me was so unstable that I was afraid to pick up the phone every time it rang for fear it would be another death. But as the song Without You from Rent says "the ground thaws, the rain falls, the grass grows...the seeds root, the flowers bloom, the children play, the stars gleam, the poets dream, the eagles fly, without you, the earth turns, the sun burns, but I die..."
Yes, you die inside, but in time, you live again. If I've learned anything in this life, it's that life is for the living and no matter how much pain and loss you have experienced, you have to pick yourself up and move on and live everyday as if it was your last.
Sadly, I wasn’t able to be at today’s final performance of Rent because I’m 3,000 miles away from Broadway stuck on the West Coast preparing for a crazy work week with two conferences, TechCrunch50 in San Francisco and DEMOfall in San Diego.
It was at last year's DEMOfall conference that in the middle of the conference I received a text message that sank my heart all over again as it has with every death. Whether the tragic news comes in person, by phone or text message, it hurts all the same.
As I write this today in celebration of life, Rent and in remembrance of its creator Jonathan Larson, I also want to take a moment to remember Hugh Hammersley and John Greco who died a year ago this month in a tragic car accident on their way to work early Wednesday morning on September 26, 2007. John was only 20 years old and Hugh had celebrated his 21st birthday the night before the accident. It was their deaths that I learned about via that heart-sinking text message at DEMO last year.
I know Hugh's family and met John's mother once several years ago, and had the opportunity to spend more time with both families last year during the services and the days following. As we approach the one year anniversary of their passing, I will be remembering them and keeping them in my thoughts and prayers.
I've seen Rent so many times that I've lost count, and sadly, while I wasn’t able to be there today to experience the final Broadway performance, I certainly was there in spirit, just as my dad, Peter and the others who I love and have lost are still with me as I dance my way through this life.
Online video is such a powerful medium to spread the word on just about anything. One area where it is incredibly powerful and useful is in bringing awareness to causes and projects that bring change to one life or millions of lives.
Today, I stumbled upon a video that deeply moved me. It was of Michelle Maykin, a 26-year old UC Berkeley graduate, class of 2004, and San Francisco Bay Area resident who is fighting for her life.
A little over a year ago Maykin, an energetic, active and vibrant young woman who enjoys mountain bike riding, rock climbing and snowboarding, set out on a bike ride. As she was riding on the bridge crossing the San Francisco Bay she found herself falling behind, feeling fatigued and experiencing shortness of breath. For someone who had always been healthy and active, this was uncharacteristic and of concern.
Then a short time later, Maykin and friends went snowboarding and both she and her friends noticed that she was struggling to keep up. After returning from her snowboarding trip, Maykin visited the doctor. On February 27, 2007, Maykin found the answer to why she had been so fatigued and was diagnosed with Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML), a blood cancer.
Over the course of a year, Maykin underwent five rounds of chemotherapy, which put her cancer in remission. She regained her strength and in February of 2008 she returned to work at KPMG in San Francisco.
After a year of fighting for her life to regain her health, she was working again and began to live the life she once had before the cancer. And then in April 2008, two months after returning to work, she began experiencing the same symptoms that she had prior to her diagnosis. On May 7, 2008, her worse fear became true when Maykin's oncologist informed her that her cancer had returned. To compound the already devastating news, Maykin also learned that an MRI showed a mass on her brain.
Michelle Maykin, once again, is in the fight of her life to save her life. But she can't do it alone. She needs me, you and all of us to do our part to help her and so many others who are in need of a donor. Thanks to her family and friends, Project Michelle was created.
According to the Project Michelle Web site, it started as a support project for Michelle Maykin and has since grown into a nationwide grassroots initiative dedicated to increasing the deficient number of minority bone marrow donor registrants in the national registry.
The U.S. Marrow Registry has 6.6 million registered donors. There are 10 million registered donors worldwide, with 506,068 of them being Asian American. Ethnic minorities only have a 30 percent chance of finding a donor, whereas whites have up to an 85 percent chance. There is a shortage of Asian, Asian American and other ethnic minority donors worldwide, which is why it is important to spread the word and help close the gap on the shortage of ethnic minority registered donors.
In mid-May, Project Michelle organizers set out to register 15,000 new potential donors in five weeks to help Michelle, and others, find a donor match. The five-week donor registration drive resulted in 250 drives in 12 cities that registered 9,000 potential donors and 3,000 online requests for home registration kits. Project Michelle is still 4,661 shy of its goal of 15,000 new registered donors.
Unfortunately, of the 10,339 new registrants, none are a match for Maykin. Project Michelle, and its many volunteers, is continuing to conduct drives across the nation to reach its goal of signing up 15,000 potential donors to find a match for Maykin and others in need of a donor match.
Become a hero and possibly save someone’s life. The process to become a registered donor is simple and only takes about ten minutes. No needles involved. Simply have the inside of your cheek swabbed with a cotton swab. If you are a match, in many cases, the transplant can be done through blood.
If you'd like to help and see if you're a match, check out the Project Michelle calendar to find a donor drive near year. And for more information about Michelle Maykin, Project Michelle and on AML, visit Project Michelle. You can also read comments and view videos of Michelle and others at the Project Michelle Stickam site.
I just learned of a very tragic and heartbreaking story about a six-month old baby boy named Kaleb Schwade, who has become known as "Baby Kaleb." Since May, he has been in a Florida hospital fighting for his life after suffering a brain injury due to Shaken Baby Syndrome (SBS).
According to news stories, baby Kaleb's day care provider, Rebecca Saunders, 35 and mother of three, is accused of allegedly shaking the baby boy so hard that it caused a brain injury. Saunders was arrested and is out on bail awaiting trial.
Baby Kaleb's parents, Kristy and Joshua Schwade, have been by his hospital bedside day and night hoping and praying for his recovery. They have received an overwhelming amount of support from what started out as a small group of Kristy's friends on her MySpace page, and has now grown to 82,403 on MySpace alone, with many more supporters across the globe on other social networking sites. The latest is on Sugar Publishing’s social networking site TeamSugar (note: I'm part of the TeamSugar social network).
Two TeamSugar members, known as "thedrywallgirl" and "t0xxic," have implemented a SBS and Baby Kaleb awareness campaign across the TeamSugar network this weekend. It was through this awareness campaign that I learned about Baby Kaleb.
It's a heartbreaking story and a tragedy that's completely preventable if people would proactively seek help for their anger management problems. It's NEVER acceptable to shake a baby regardless of how loud or long a baby cries. It's difficult to understand how someone could injure and harm a child in any manner, but the sad reality is that it does happen, which is why it's important to raise awareness of SBS.
I wrote about it today, because I want to help spread the word about SBS and about the Schwade family's story. You can learn more about SBS by visiting the National Center on Shaken Baby Syndrome Web site. If you're interested in following baby Kaleb's progress, Kristy regularly updates her MySpace page.
Our hearts and prayers go out to the Schwade family and other families dealing with the devastating aftermath of SBS.
pinkMOXIE is my personal blog where I share my personal thoughts, opinions and rants on career, culture, community, motherhood, dance, music, health, beauty, spas, and other musings. The idea is to keep it informative and fun, with the occasional rant of course; but at the same time I want to also share experiences that people can learn from and products that make life just a little sweeter and easier.
The “pink” in pinkMOXIE is symbolic for fun and playfulness, and the “moxie” inpinkMOXIEis because we as women have faced difficulty and demands in an
unforgiving and challenging world with dignity, grace, spirit and
courage. Sometimes we get it right and other times we fall flat on our
faces, but we get up, dust ourselves off and forge ahead.
I know I can't be alone in feeling that life is moving at a dizzying
pace. Because when I talk with my friends and other women who I meet at
conferences, events and parties, at some point in the conversation it segues into
discussing how difficult it is to juggle all the demands of career,
motherhood, relationships and all the other tugging-for-attention
demands placed upon us.
By the time we reach 40 years young (or are fast-approaching 40), we have
so much on our plates that it’s difficult to find time for ourselves. I
think many of us have lost a sense of self and unknowingly have morphed
into someone who is not our authentic self, is highly stressed much of
the day, and has no time to connect with others in a meaningful way.
Our once carefree lives have turned into a life of running the kids to
their ever-growing list of activities, homework and school events,
feeling the increasing pressure from the never-ending deadlines at
work, feeling like we never have quality time with our significant
other, and we are tired of the household to-do list that just grows
longer with every passing day.
Of course diving into the blogosphere with my own personal blog is adding one
more item to my ever-growing to-do list, but I think it will be worth
the time invested. I've sat on the sidelines of the blogosphere for far
too long now and feel that it's time for me to take the plunge.
Blogging, social networking, and other technologies, such as instant messaging (IM), are great ways to connect with other other women (okay, and men too) in a meaningful way and engage
in conversations on topics of common interest without having to take
the time to meet in person for coffee, dinner or at an event (not that I don't
love to do these things, because I do; but sometimes I find it difficult to find
the time).
With all of our daily demands and juggling kids and career, at the end of the day we are tired and spent. I think it’s time to
stop the avalanche of demands and take back our lives. My goal for pinkMOXIE is to make it a blog
where other women can discover new ideas, people, products, and tips that make life a little sweeter. It's also about learning to create harmony in our homes, satisfaction in our jobs, and ultimately to be in love with our lives everyday.
I'm sure there are women out there who feel that they have it all,
juggle it all perfectly and have mastered the balancing act between
work and home life. If this is you, thenpinkMOXIE
is probably not the place for you, because for me it's a challenge every day. Of course, I welcome any helpful
tips you want to share with those of us who find the juggling act
sometimes difficult and stressful, and who just want to holler as loud
as we can when we hit our boiling point!
But, if you're a woman with moxie and feel like I used to in that you have little time for yourself, have unknowingly morphed into someone who is not
your authentic self, is highly stressed much of the day, and has no
time to connect with others in a meaningful way, then I invite you to
take this journey with me. It took me some time to realize the importance of taking "me time" on a daily basis so I can have peace and balance in my life. And finding balance in my life was the best gift I could have given myself. And I invite you to do the same.
Together, let's take back our lives, or at minimum, seize a moment in
the day to connect with others and our authentic self, and remember
what it feels like to be carefree and spontaneous. Let’s help each
other find time to take a moment to relax, or pamper ourselves with a
day at the spa, or guide and support each other in finding the dream
job/career (or turning your current job into one), or just having a little more peace and balance in your daily life.
If you’re still reading this far down, I’m touched. I know this first
post is lengthy, but moving forward, I hope to keep most posts
somewhat shorter and to the point, because I don't want this blog to be a time-consuming
thing for me or anyone else. And I'm sure I'll have a typo, a
grammatical error, or a misspelling on occasion, so feel free to point
them out, or better yet, say to yourself "I know what she meant" and
let it go.
More importantly, I invite you to share your comments, advice or just
vent. I only ask that you respect me and others who participate. You
don’t have to agree with me or what others write, and you can say so,
just don’t hate on us. This is not a place for haters, or as my good
friend Sherri says, “no fun-haters” please.
If you want to know more about me, go to the “About” page and scroll down to the bottom of that page. And I would love to know more about you. Feel free to introduce yourself now or in the days, weeks, months, or years ahead. I look forward to meeting you and sharing thoughts, ideas and helpful tips with each other.
Today marks the end of an era with the closing of the award-winning Broadway musical 
Online video is such a powerful medium to spread the word on just about anything. One area where it is incredibly powerful and useful is in bringing awareness to causes and projects that bring change to one life or millions of lives. 
I just learned of a very tragic and heartbreaking story about a six-month old baby boy named Kaleb Schwade, who has become known as "Baby Kaleb." Since May, he has been in a Florida hospital fighting for his life after suffering a brain injury due to Shaken Baby Syndrome (SBS). 
