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Leukemia Survivor Felicia Wu | Kansas City Portrait Photographer

March 31, 2014


There is a famous quote about friendshipfrom Lun Yu, translated as “Analects of Confucius” – What a pleasure to have a friend come from afar! I have moved so many times since childhood. I treasure all the friends I made throughout the years. Although I don’t see them much, I still keep in touch with them. If they are in town, I will treat them the best I can to make them feel home. Felicia and I met at the first day of our current day job. We were in the same start group and went through the same training program for 3 months. She was assigned to a project in UK after 6 months and then relocated to work in Australia. Recently she had the opportunity to attend a conference in Kansas City. This was the first time that she came back to Kansas City after 8 years! Of course, I would try my best to give her the best experience while she’s in town. We planned for a fun on location photoshoot. She wanted something both casual and sexy. She is still the same Felicia I know from 8 years ago – still bubbly and wears a sunshine smile on her face all the time. There is something that she wanted me to tell in this story…

A few years ago I received the news that she was diagnosed with leukemia. Although it was a tough stage for her, I keep seeing all the positive things she posts to facebook throughout the entire treatment. She loves coffee and cooking. Like me, she also loves taking food pictures. She has a series of food pictures called Messy Chef for all the dishes made by Messy Chef Felicia. Every single picture in this series makes me drool. She loves friends and social networking. She lives with her husband Mike and her dog Molly in Sydney, Australia.

During her short stay in Kansas City, I asked Felicia to share her experience flighting cancer. She was totally fine with it. In fact, she was asked by many friends who care about her the same questions, so we decided to share this interview on Bokeh Stories.

Can you tell me how you found out you had leukemia?

It actually all started with a toothache! My tooth was hurting so I went to the dentist, who told me I had to get my wisdom tooth out. I thought “fair enough” and scheduled the surgery for a week later. Throughout that week, I got progressively sicker and sicker, with massive headaches and very high temperatures which I could not break. I couldn’t hold down any food and had absolutely no appetite, which is incredibly strange for me. By the morning of my wisdom tooth removal, I could hardly walk on my own and was vision was getting very blurry. Mike (my hubby) took me to the surgeon’s office and the anesthesiologist took one look at me and said “I can’t operate on her like this.” He told my husband to take me to our GP, who was luckily very close by. My GP took one look at me and sent me directly to the emergency room. I later found out she knew once she saw the massive bruises all over my legs. Mike literally carried me into the emergency room, who was expecting me, and I was taken in straight away. From there, everything happened incredibly fast. I was poked and prodded and asked heaps of questions which I don’t even remember. I was taken to a special private room, which was a bit unnerving, and they sent in two hematologists who told me they wear going to do a bone marrow biopsy. “OMG WHY?” I thought. The biopsy was the most painful experience I’ve ever experienced. Mike was so strong and stayed with me the entire time. We prayed together the whole time. I was then rolled into the resuscitation bay (again, “OMG WHY?!?”…but later found out it was only because there was nowhere else to put me) and they sent in the whole hematology team who told me the news – I had acute promyelocytic leukemia. It is fairly rare. I would not be going back to work anytime soon. Yes people die from it. We need to start chemotherapy right away. Call parents. It all happened so fast but I think it was better that way, to just lay out the facts and move forward. That night, I told Mike I was scared to fall asleep…..I thought I was going to die. I got my central line put in the next day and chemo started right away.

What were you thinking??

It really depends on who you ask to be honest. Mike told me that, when they told us the news, I was very calm and just ready to move forward and get the treatment started. From my own memory, I was completely freaking out and crying. I just kept asking why and they literally said “it’s just bad luck”…….well geeze…..VERY bad luck! Mike and I prayed together non-stop and I still remember feeling just that much closer to him as we prayed. God gave us a sense of peace in all the chaos that was going on around us at that time.

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How did your family and friends react when they found out?

For me, that was the hardest part. Mike was so strong and he took on all of that for me. He was the one who called my parents, who were both overseas at the time. He called his parents and his mom flew in straight away. He called our friends and also my work. Those were the hardest calls he’s ever made. Everyone was a lot stronger than I ever would have imagined. Some friends came to visit after a few days and all of them were so strong and positive about the whole thing. My friend Ashwin took indefinite leave from work when he received my email, with no questions asked and no second thought. I remember when I saw my good friend Dory, I was crying and she was crying. And she just looked right at me and said “stop crying, don’t cry. Everything’s going to be just fine.” I found that really amazing. I spoke with my sister on the phone and she just kept telling me to be brave and that she was praying for me non-stop. I expected my mom to be a mess when she arrived, but she just looked at me and said “don’t be scared. We’re going to do this and everything’s going to be fine.” I distinctly remember one night when my parents, Mike, and I walked down to the hospital chapel. My Dad prayed and just busted out in tears. All of us cried and just prayed that night together. It was an amazing experience to share with my family. God really does give strength. That strength from everyone around me was also extremely helpful to me and just gave me the push to think “let’s do this!” Throughout the whole ordeal, I had so many cards, emails, message, and letters from people close to me and from people who I didn’t even think liked me! It was just amazing how people all over the world rallied around both me and Mike and were thinking about us.

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So how was the treatment?

To be honest it was really hard. I apparently had one of the worst cases of mouth and throat ulcers that some of the hematology nurses had ever seen. I didn’t eat for 5 weeks! I also had fluid in my lungs so wasn’t able to breathe very well for the first couple of months. It was like a constant asthma attack. I remember thinking throughout the treatment that I was the luckiest chemo patient in the ward. There were so many people there with no visitors for days. They didn’t have anyone to help them do anything (when going through chemo, you need LOTS of help with EVERYTHING….private things….like going to the bathroom and showering) so were completely reliant on the nurses. I had someone with me 24/7 for the first three weeks I was in the hospital. Although I couldn’t eat, my mom brought me beef broth everyday hoping that I could drink some of it for some energy. My parents dragged filtered alkaline water from our apartment up the hill to the hospital every day, multiple times. Given the circumstances, I really had nothing to complain about. After the inpatient treatment, things got a lot better. I did outpatient treatment for about 4 months which wasn’t too bad at all. My mom was there with me every single day, seven days a week. My best friend Joyce also came to visit for a week and joined me at the hospital everyday for treatment. We watched movies and ate cheese crackers! I then started oral chemo tablets, which is meant to be the easy part, when people start going back to normal life. The dose of the tablets was way too strong for me and I actually lost my hair a second time. I was admitted into hospital for 9 days the first time I tried the tablets. Then I was admitted into hospital for 4 days the second time I tried the tablets. That was actually really rough but the doctor finally got the dosage right on the third try. Once that was sorted, things really started looking up and I was starting to feel much better. It took a very long time for my energy level to come up but I could tell it was happening, slowly slowly.

How did you cope with losing your hair?

When you’re that sick, your hair is really the least of your worries. You just feel so horrible all the time that you don’t have the time or the energy to even think about what’s happening to your hair. I insisted not to shave it when they encouraged me to, in preparation for losing it. For some reason I was pretty confident I was going to get through this without losing my hair. I was very wrong. So my hair looked pretty awful for a long time. After the second hospital admission, I decided to bit the bullet and shave my head….well the literally two strands of hair I had left. It was time. Mike shaved the last strands when they let me leave the hospital for a few hours to go home and rest. We shaved the strands, I laid in bed and cried, and then we went back to the hospital. That was a bad day. But it actually looked a lot better once those leftover strands were gone. Looking back, it was just a really interesting experience.

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You were planning your wedding when you got sick. How did you deal with this?

Well we ended up moving the wedding twice because I kept getting sick. We had big concerns about travelling all the way to the US so we just moved it because it was important for me to get married back home in Dallas. But we got there ☺ It definitely puts a lot of wedding decisions in perspective when you’re planning from the chemo clinics! My mom was a huge help in getting everything ready. I got a great wig for the wedding and made sure my hair lady was comfortable working with a wig. She did a great job. Unfortunately we had to change our honeymoon plans as well. Mike had planned a beautiful honeymoon travelling around the country in France. After my third hospital admission, we decided to go somewhere in the US and English speaking, just in case anything happened. We’ll definitely make the France trip one of these days!

How are you doing now?

Things are great now! I’m back at work full time and that is going really well. Everything is pretty much back to normal, outside of my energy level, which can still be a bit low at times. I’ve finished chemo completely as of September 2013 and Mike and I are looking forward into our future now.

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You must have taken a lot away from this experience. What were some things that you learned going through cancer?

One of the main things that I learned is to not stress. It’s so easy to stress about things in our day to day life that, plain and simple, don’t matter. I remember when I was in the emergency room receiving my diagnosis, the only thing I thought of was my family and how they were going to deal with this. That tells you what matters. What do you care about when you’ve just been diagnosed with cancer? Focus on those things and only those things. Everything else is just noise. This whole experience has also strengthened both my relationship with God as well as Mike’s. I was amazed at how much we prayed together, even though Mike isn’t Christian. It was the natural thing to do in that time and just praying brought both of us peace and comfort in a really scary time. The last thing that I’m really grateful to cancer for is teaching me to appreciate my health. Being a young energetic girl, I pushed my body to the max with work, exercise, going out, etc. While I was off work for 18 months, I did a lot of research on using food as medicine and I continue to practice this even now and plan to continue for the rest of my life. There are heaps of natural ways to give your body the best chances to self heal and it can be delicious too! I love reading about healthy foods and learning about how to use them in our day-to-day meals. I continue to try and live this every day.

Felicia is always bubbly and full of energy. I love her positive attitude towards life. We both hope that this story would motivate patients in a positive way towards treatments and also keep healthy individuals work towards their goals in their lives.

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5 Comments
    AnnMarie Apr 01, 2014

    Wow, this is an incredible story and amazing how positive she managed to stay through all that she’d been through. So happy to hear she is doing well and moving forward. The pics are beautiful!

    Reply
    Keely Apr 03, 2014

    What a beautiful woman! So amazing that you were able to do these photos for her and share her story 🙂

    Reply
    Felicia wu Apr 10, 2014

    Lai thank you so much for doing this for me. I was really nervous about sharing my story so openly like this but you really encouraged me and in so glad I did! Thank you so much!!

    Reply
      Bokeh Story Photos Apr 10, 2014

      Felicia! I am so honored to do share your beautiful and powerful story. So happy that it’s all done and you are all bubbly again!

      Reply

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