Amber Tookey, CML Survivor
In 2019 Amber Tookey was an active and healthy young woman. She was an avid runner and was training to bet back competitively. Her rigorous training made her feel tired, but what she was feeling at the time was different. It was an extreme exhaustion and then she started to develop swelling in her abdomen. Her competitive spirit told her to push though the exhaustion but the swelling was not going away. So finally, her husband Chuck convinced her to go see a doctor.
At the hospital, they determined that there was a swollen mass in her abdomen. The mass was her spleen. It had grown 3 times the normal size right at 22 centimeters. Her family and her joked about her oversized spleen while waiting for the doctors, thinking that it couldn’t be that bad. But then, several doctors came into the room and asked her husband and daughter to leave the room.
They told her that she had Leukemia. Her white blood cell count was well below the normal range. It was Chronic Myelogenous Leukemia. She was in shock. They explained that the cancer was in her blood and bone marrow and there was no “lump” that could be removed. Without treatment, she would die.
The next day, she met with her lead care team provider and he informed her that she “hit the cancer lottery.” Her type of cancer could be managed by just taking pills! Her body responded well to the pills for the first few months but after 6 months passed, they quit working. So they then tried another treatment and at first had positive results. Then in early 2020, while in Colorado running the Snowshoe Nationals, she got a call saying that the medication stopped working.
Keeping one medication as a last resort, the care team decided that a bone marrow transplant was the next best choice. Amber checked into the hospital in late December to receive her transplant. She spent the next month in the hospital recovering from the transplant and on the day before her 36th birthday, she was discharged.
2 weeks after her discharge, she went on her first run. 50 days after her discharge she ran a 10k. 6 months after her discharge she summited Kendall Mountain, a 13,000-foot peak in Colorado as part of a 12-mile race.
Her athletic self is back and her whole self is changed forever. Cancer may still be a part of her, an immeasurable part, as her labs have been declared cancer free for the last year. And just this July 2023, she went back to conquer that same 13,000-foot mountain and finished the race in 4th place. Amber is the true definition of resilience.
Quote from Amber “Thanks to my support team and advancements in cancer research, I'm alive today. Had it not been for donations to the LLS, I might not be here today. One of the leading researchers for the LLS invented the family of cancer drugs I take to stay alive. It is unreal to think that if I had been diagnosed ten years ago, I probably wouldn't have had a fighting chance. Thank you for your past and future donations. Don't think for a second that a donation won't make a difference, because every dollar will affect someone's life in a unique way. ❤️❤️❤️