Help Dori Fight Cancer

[June 2024 Update]

Our beloved Dori passed away on June 12, 2024. We want to thank everyone who supported Dori throughout her journey. Your support meant so much to her and kept her fighting each and every day. We will be repurposing the GoFundMe to assist with funeral expenses. Please join us on June 20, 2024 in Oakland to celebrate the life of Dori (details here).

Diagnosis

On July 29, 2022, just after we celebrated Dori’s 28th birthday–and after being misdiagnosed 3-times–Dori went into the ER and was diagnosed with an aggressive type of Endometrial cancer. It was a shock. Dori was only 28, healthy (or so she thought) and fit–she would spend up to two hours in the gym every day–and now learned she had a cancer usually only seen in women twice her age. It only added to the disbelief when we learned her cancer was not genetic.

Immediately after the diagnosis, Dori went into surgery. The 6 hour surgery turned into a 12 hour surgery, and Dori spent 10 days in the hospital relearning to walk.

If you don’t know Dori, she’s always been healthy, a gym rat. She’s the friend that you think “We get it. You work out.” She’s a fighter, a survivor, she’s relentless. Here are some examples of that strength:

• Since I met her, she came to SF from Hawaii jobless with some savings from waitressing. I watched her research a UX bootcamp, apply herself and claw her way into an already competitive industry starting from the bottom as a UX coordinator. I watched her build herself up, get laid off, pick herself back up again and immerse herself into unpaid side projects to maintain her skills until she got into her next role. Today, Dori is loving her role as a UX Researcher at Peloton, a company where her passions align.

• She went from barely being able to get out of bed after the surgery, to walking slowly with a walker, to pushing herself to run, then relentlessly asking her doctors if she could go back to working out regularly.

• Two days after surgery, she pushed herself to interview for full-time roles from her hospital bed–the interviewers had no idea. In-between treatments, she’d schedule interviews and fought through symptoms. She did this so she could get full-time benefits and be paid for the time off (as opposed to unpaid time off while she was a contractor - thanks ‘Merica). In-between treatments, She eventually landed her current full-time role as a UX Researcher at Peloton.

Treatment

Dori completed 6 rounds of chemo (starting from Aug 2022 to January 2023) and received a clean PET scan in January of this year. Then in May, just 2 days after getting engaged, after Dori insisted on a biopsy, we received new test results that confirmed she was experiencing a recurrence; it came back. The doctor recommended we try immunotherapy but also was clear that he was not sure how effective it would be, and that the options were limited. When I asked him what we should do in the event that the immunotherapy was unsuccessful and if the cancer continued to grow, he responded “we’ll see, let’s wait and see.”

As conventional treatment proved to be inconsistent and unreliable again and again, I was not going to put all of our eggs in one basket and hold my breath on “let’s wait and see”. It was imperative for us to research and identify alternative solutions quickly. We buried ourselves in research, and learned more from other cancer survivors’ experiences. We came across Jane McClelland’s “How to Starve Cancer” and read about how she healed herself from a similar stage 4 cancer (3 times!) through diet and alternative medicine after conventional medicine failed her. I emailed Jane McClelland to learn more about how her healing regimen might help Dori and to my surprise she replied! For a cost of course, we had the opportunity to meet with her and talk about Dori’s situation – it was worth every penny.

I also reached out to women in a support group on Facebook who had the same diagnosis as Dori, figuring if they had posted a couple years ago and responded to me, they must be doing something right. A woman replied she’d been to a few alternative clinics in the states but she found an alternative clinic in Mexico called Hope4Cancer and she raved about it. We flew the following week. It was a 3 week program that involved treatments 7 days a week beginning from 8am sometimes ending as late as 8pm. It was an estimated 60k (out of pocket) for the program and this did not include the medications and treatments we would have to purchase and bring home. By the end of the 3rd week, her tumor markers decreased down to 6– the lowest they had ever been.

Healthcare is expensive, even for the insured

While we’re lucky to have health insurance, and it did cover a lot–$1,859,270 and counting–it didn’t cover everything. Our insurance didn't cover all of the hospital bills or things such as Dori’s walker when she first exited the hospital, her continuous glucose monitors (CGM) to monitor her blood sugar levels, or the genetic testing that was done ($8k).

After returning home from Dori’s treatment in Mexico, it was important to continue the diet suggested by the program. It is a strict diet– low glycemic, organic, dairy free, sugar free, gluten free diet. We also continued with high dose Intravenous vitamin c treatments which cost $405 a session and Dori’s protocol is weekly. Her supplements, medications, and clean eating diet can quickly add up.

We’ve had to exhaust our wedding fund to pay for Dori’s treatment in Mexico along with the supplements, medications and at-home therapies purchased there. While selling my car helped on our most recent trip to Mexico- that still only covered 5,700 of the 10k. Now that Dori is on medical leave from work, we’re looking for support to continue the treatments that are helping with side effects and alternative treatments not covered by insurance. We believe the alternative treatments in combination with conventional treatments as well as diet and lifestyle modifications will continue to help Dori heal.

What about family? Dori’s father is in Taiwan and is unable to help as much as he’d like. Dori’s mother called when Dori was first in the hospital. She was going to fly over to help. This forced Dori to tell her mother that she lived with me, her partner. Upon hearing this, her mother was ashamed and disappointed and declined to visit. She said she didn’t want this life for Dori (being gay) and imagined Dori with a husband and kids - expressing disappointment that this dream is no longer an option for her. Dori hasn’t heard from her since then (August 2022). Dori’s an only child. As I'm from the East Coast and Dori from Hawaii, we are each other's family here.

We’re throwing everything including the kitchen sink at this and since time is the enemy, we’re looking for help to get access to bigger guns. For the past year, Dori wanted to fight this quietly to avoid the stigma of being a cancer patient and to feel as normal as possible. While we were able to keep this somewhat private for a year, it’s gotten to a point where we need the help and support from others in order to continue helping Dori heal.

What's a healing registry?

Society tells us that we need to shower married and child-bearing people with gifts and parties like: bridal showers, weddings, baby showers or even kids' birthday parties. While getting married and having children are certainly wonderful milestones worth showing support for, they're not the only ones we should show up for. Right now we’re looking for that same support to help Dori heal.

Dori has dreams, the first being she’d like to live past 30 and be cancer free by her 30th birthday. She wants to be a TED Talks speaker and help people who have also been diagnosed with cancer to heal and thrive. She wants to grow in her career and become a thought leader in the UX industry one day.

While we wish this was a wedding registry that we were sharing, Dori’s health is our first priority so that option remains a possibility in the future.

What you can do

1. Donate to GoFundMe

2. Send a gift card to any of the options below

3. Hang out with Dori - physically sit next to her and shoot the shit, talk about anything but cancer

4. Share this post to get further reach

We appreciate any and all of your support!

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To learn more about Upcoming Medical Costs, Contacting Dori, Research we’ve done, and More Ways to Help, Thank You’s log in here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1VmqfMbCXU10pbEwst7ArAynQCoXTdObWuZrMWDYilgI/edit