Past & Present: A Fucking Nightmare ('07)

Q: What are you up to now?⁣

A: Trying not to die. I got diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia in 2011 while I was at UCLA and it has been the fucking nightmare of my life. At the time, I was in the middle of a summer internship and I was walking on crutches around the office holding paper files in my mouth. Then one day I just collapsed and had to be carried to the car to the doctor. The sad shit is, when I was at MV, I attended Cure Cancer Café hosted by Octagon to support the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. That whole time, I didn't really know what it was and when I got diagnosed, I had to fucking crawl upstairs to my computer and Wikipedia it. The next day I was rushed to Good Samaritan Hospital. I did a year of chemotherapy before needing a bone marrow transplant at Stanford.⁣

When Mr. Chow heard I needed to find a donor, he set up a campaign at MV to bring awareness. My friend and MV classmate Steffi also created a campaign online. I really didn’t think anyone would care outside my immediate friends and family, but this turned out to be a community-wide effort including many strangers who registered for the National Bone Marrow Registry with the help of other organizations. I will always be grateful, love you all!⁣

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My donor actually went to MV, but I never met him before. After searching all around the world to try and find a match, it turns out the guy lives 10 minutes from me in Sunnyvale. We are friends now. So I got my transplant, YAY, thanks everyone. My donor’s immune system doesn’t recognize the new body it’s in and goes around attacking my organs. It's developed into bronchiolitis obliterans; it makes it harder to exhale and the best I can hope for is to try and stave off its progression with a shit load of medication, which makes my immune system weak. There's a lot of things in life that I want to do that I can't and it fucking sucks. Despite that, I am still very grateful to have found a match, which allowed me to go back to UCLA.⁣

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I graduated in 2019 and have been working remotely due to the pandemic. I really like my job and have been learning about important issues facing our country.

To be honest, I never really had any academic interests. The only reason I worked my ass off in high school was because I wanted to go to West Point and become an Army officer. I was a pretty directionless kid until one day in middle school, I saw a Discovery Channel documentary on the U.S. Service Academies. The candidates were all so accomplished in high school, many of them were valedictorians, class presidents, and great athletes. I was none of those things, but I was going to try and be. I was also enamored by the history and idealism of the place.⁣

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But growing up in the Bay, going into the military was not a common or particularly popular choice. While my parents did not like the idea, they did not stop me. Still, there were quite a few people who would ask me, “Why would you want to join the Army? Your grades are too good” or “Why do you want to join the white man’s army?” And I remember thinking, “Well, it’s my goddamn country too!” ⁣

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I know our country is not perfect and neither is the Army, which throughout history, has been called upon to accomplish great things, as well as some controversial ones. But overall, I believe in the institution. I believe in the necessity for a well-trained professional standing army that swears allegiance to the Constitution of the United States. Because unfortunately, there will always be conflict in the world, it’s mankind’s nature. And when I saw the Twin Towers fall in seventh grade, I knew without a doubt what I wanted to do.⁣

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So I worked really hard to get good grades and do well at Speech and Debate. But, academics was hard for me and I hated it. Honestly yo, I’m dumb as a rock. If it took someone one hour to study for an exam to get an “A”, it would probably take me five, but I would put in those five hours, just because I wanted to go to West Point. The only reason I got great grades in high school was sheer fucking will, not talent. My entire academic experience felt like drowning, so by the time I graduated Monta Vista, I was completely burned out.

I got rejected by West Point my senior year, and aside from that, I had no interest in going to college. My parents pushed me to apply for the U.C.s, so on my application, for “What are your academic interests?” I straight up wrote, “I have no academic interests. The only reason I’m applying to college is because I need a B.A to become an Army officer and fly Blackhawks. And if this is Berkeley, please don’t accept me”. When I got into UCLA with an Army ROTC scholarship, I decided to go. But I fell into the same trap in high school, locking myself away and studying my ass off; I was miserable and had sacrificed almost every opportunity to socialize because I felt like I didn’t have the ability to study and enjoy college at the same time. I had a 3.9 GPA my first year at UCLA and I never felt more alone. But I had still been reapplying to West Point, not wanting to give up so easily, and this time, I got in. ⁣

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It was one of the best and most memorable experiences of my life, and although I did not end up graduating, I learned a lot in my one year at the academy. I wasn’t the greatest cadet. I failed one of the physical requirements (gymnastics class) twice. I was also a shit runner who despite constantly running, never seemed to improve. By my second year, I had already been put under review for dismissal, so I knew my days there were numbered. Leaving was one of the hardest things I had ever done at that point in my life, and for the longest time, a part of me still felt like it was back there even though I wasn’t.

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I knew I couldn’t just wallow in pity, so I went back home to De Anza and worked my way back to UCLA. I learned to get back up again, to not let one failure, even a big one, define the rest of my life. As much as I loved my time at the academy, I realized that the world is much bigger and that a man does not have to be beholden to a single interest in life, which gave me the motivation to start anew, find another path, and make something out of myself with the same enthusiasm I once had.

Contrary to what some may think, cancer did not make me a more mature, wise, or worldly individual, in fact, it did just the opposite. While others were graduating college, becoming professionals, and starting families, I was stuck in a fucking hellhole in which time stalled for me. All I wanted coming back was to have a good, unwholesome time. But when I called my friends up, often they would say, “Sorry man, I got work tomorrow, or sorry bro my kid is teething” and I’m thinking, “Holy shit you have a kid??? I still feel like one myself.” And that’s when you realize that while you haven’t moved on, everyone else has. And it feels awkward trying to make friends in college when you’re now 25 and they are 19. It’s like you’re a man-child but not in a cool Van Wilder way, but in a sad, depressed, awkward kind of way. But I eventually did make friends, had a great time, which made going back to UCLA the best thing that I could’ve done for myself. ⁣⁣

Luckily, my parents are great and said, “We will support you, just take it easy and rest”, but I couldn’t accept that. I never wanted to be the guy who graduated college but is still in his 30s, unemployed, and living in his parents’ basement eating Cheetos while playing World of Warcraft (This was pre-pandemic). But when I got sick, and saw myself in the mirror, I was like, “Fuck, I am that guy.” Even though people say, “Well it's different because you had cancer,” No, not to me. I still felt like shit about myself. And when I saw my friends graduate and become officers, I knew I should feel happy for them, but all I did was cry, thinking “What the fuck happened to me? How did my life go so shit sideways? I worked my ass off too, but why did I end up with a fucking tube out of my chest being pumped with medication?” Even during the worst treatments, when they stuck a needle into my spinal cord, or the radiation therapy would rip the skin off my body every time I moved, Holy Fuck that hurt, I never cried; I just swore a lot. But realizing that no matter how hard I try, I would never be able to live the life I wanted and had worked so hard for.

I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life sitting on my ass watching other people do the things I’ve always wanted to do. I'm like a shark. I have to keep on moving or I would feel like I would die emotionally. Even though I still have some very serious and debilitating medical issues, I still wanted to do something with my life, to have something that I can call my own, and most of all, to feel something besides defeat, which is why I am very happy to have the job I have now, and it's something that I wanted to do before I got sick, not because I got sick, and that's important to me. ⁣

Yet, I had a lot of fear trying to enter the workforce after cancer. I told myself, “Yo, you spent the better part of your 20s just trying not to fucking die while everybody else who you graduated with in high school are now managers, VPs, and doctors. Who would hire a fucking disabled kid with a cancer history? But if you can, keep trying, I sought the help of counselors and friends, re-worked my resume and cover letters so that, as my friend would say, “you’re always ready for your break”, because even if you don’t quite believe in yourself yet, someone else might, and sometimes that’s all you need to start turning your shit around.

Q: What did you like about MV? ⁣

A: It’s a safe school with a great supportive community, which I never really thought about until I got sick. When I was first told that I would need a bone marrow transplant to live, I was like, “Fuck, I might as well be dead already.” I was counting on my fingers the number of people I thought would actually bother to donate for me and I don't even think I reached 10. But there were many teachers and students who helped bring awareness such as Mr. Chow and my friend Steffi, as well as the local media. And soon, there was a huge response. Even people I never knew were hitting me up saying they did the cheek swab test for Be The Match. I will always be grateful for that and to the Monta Vista community and beyond. ⁣

Q: What advice would you give to current students at MV? ⁣

A: Appreciate the chances you get in life especially when you are young, sometimes great opportunities come your way, but you weren’t mature enough at the time to handle it. And you may think, “Well, I’m still young and there’ll be other days,” but what you don’t realize is that sometimes, that was the only day, and you didn’t even know it.⁣

Also, if you didn’t do so well in high school, don’t worry too much, because in high school you are only judged on stuff like SATs, math, chem, lit, history, etc. If your interests or talents do not align with those, then high school can make you feel pretty dumb. I know plenty of people from Monta Vista who DID NOT get great grades, DID NOT go to famous schools, but now work at places like Google and Apple as software engineers, finance professionals, etc. - why? because that’s where their talents are, but they don't teach that stuff in high school, so maybe you didn't do so well back then because you were not being judged by the stuff you were actually good at or interested in. Personally, I think that there are only a few things in life that can really fuck you up such as getting cancer or doing hard-core drugs (no experience), but a low GPA in high school is not one of them. So as long as you get a good head on your shoulders, you’ll figure your shit out someday.