'You Don't Know Jack': an Article Written by a Monta Vista High School Student

Editor's note: This article, written by Monta Vista High School student Aafreen Mahmood first appeared in the school's magazine El Estoque. Photos were taken by Christophe Haubursin. It has been edited for Cupertino Patch and split into two articles, the first you see here. The second half of the article will appear on Cupertino Patch on Friday.

His body curled up in a ball, lying on a hospital bed after several surgeries and chemotherapy treatments: he was motionless—except for a single finger brushing the back of his mother’s hand.

“He couldn’t speak, but he was just trying to thank [his] mom and give her the message,” Chinese teacher I-Chu Chang said, translating his mother’s memory written on a Chinese flyer. “He’s that kind of boy.”

graduate was diagnosed in the summer of 2011 with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia and has since had to embrace the unwelcoming hospital atmosphere for chemotherapy.

“In high school, you don’t really think about these things. You realize in college, though, that you grow up fast and this will happen to someone,” Chin said. “To me, it happened. To the guy who never thought it would.”

A different kind of student

Three times a week in his senior year, Chin headed to the football field to run, trying to build the athlete’s body that eluded him. Since the 3rd grade, Chin resolved to apply to West Point, the United States Military Academy.

“I wanted to be the guy who ‘took the road less traveled,’ who wasn’t ready for an ordinary, normal life after graduating college,” Chin said. “There’s so much out there, you know. I would be doing something that none of my family; none of my peers ever did before. It’s part of the adventure, not knowing.”

Jack Chin's biggest fears in life were: coming back home after college, baldness and needles—all of which he experienced in the last nine months. Between chemotherapy treatments, Jack plays computer games such as World of Warcraft and watches TV.

Initially rejected, Chin reapplied to West Point during his freshman year at UCLA and admitted summer 2009. Though he accomplished his childhood dream, West Point was not quite what he expected. He never had an athlete’s body—his small frame made it difficult to walk long miles.

After painstaking physical challenges, nausea on hiking trips and failed gymnastics classes, Chin decided returning to UCLA was his best option.

“[At West Point] sometimes I got my ass kicked, sometimes it was just pure awesome,” Chin said. “You take all of that and look back and say, ‘Wow, it was a very personally rewarding experience.’”

Chin always laughs off his setbacks, says Steffi Lau, another Monta Vista High School grad, as evidenced in one of his Twitter posts: “Radiation feels super weird. I hope it turns me into The Hulk.”

In conversations, amidst coughs and wheezes and slurred words, he still manages to laugh.

The first symptoms and diagnosis

In June 2011, Chin began to feel a severe pain in his thigh that spread below his kneecaps, before flaring up in his other leg.

“It kept getting worse and worse. My mom thought I had bad posture,” Chin laughed. “Literally, we didn’t have a better reason.”

Six weeks of pain, minimal sleep and many Tylenol pills later, he couldn’t stand it anymore.

On July 27, 2011, after several blood tests and MRI scans at Good Samaritan Hospital the shocking news was delivered; Chin had Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia.

To protect his grandmother in Taiwan from learning about his condition, his Chinese name was withheld in a World Journal article.

“When the doctor said, ‘Oh, your bone pain will be gone in three days after the first dose of chemotherapy,’ I was like, ‘All right, let’s do this!’” Chin said. “After that, I was like, ‘Holy (crap), wait, he just told me I have cancer! Oh my God!’”

A summer internship at Visa; his final year at UCLA, a Hong Kong study-abroad trip culminating in his major in economics, a full-time job interview, and tickets to the video game convention Blizzcon—he had to drop them all.

“Everything that I had worked so hard for just got magically taken away,” Chin said.

Though the chemotherapy might reduce his pain, he learned there was still a chance the cancer would return.

“Each progressive piece of news and realization makes you even more depressed,” Chin said. “Not everything hits you at once.”

Chemotherapy

Chin had no choice but to get over his fear of needles. The intrathecal chemotherapy entailed a number of needles and catheters inserted into his veins—in addition to radiation therapy to his brain, spinal punctures between his vertebrae to insert medication and surgeries from the resulting complications of the treatment.

“You can either go in and be brave or you can go in kicking and screaming but they’re going to stick that needle in your spine anyways. Just do it; you’re gonna stab me? You’re gonna stab me.”

The worst news came after several months of chemotherapy. On Jan. 13, he learned that his treatment was not moving toward remission and he needed to find a bone marrow match. In order to prevent future relapses from occurring, Chin needed to replace his abnormal cells with healthy ones from a compatible donor.

Not even the bone marrow of his fraternal twin brother, Jim Chin, was a match and the likelihood of Jack finding a match is 1 in 20,000—yet without a match, he will not survive.

After the news and taking action

Lying in the backseat of the car on his way home from Good Samaritan Hospital, Jack Chin’s head was down; he was crying while trying to control his voice when speaking to his parents. He knew his chances of survival were, according to Jack, “severely in the gray area.”

When not playing computer games or resting, Chin often takes walks around the neighborhood to get fresh air. But after a fourth chemotherapy course on March 6— which, according to Chin, is the most painful—he will not be able to leave the house very often nor meet with others.

Because of a weakened immune system to prevent infection, among other restrictions he can’t eat raw or unwashed fruits and vegetables and must be in clean environments.

 “Now I’m going to have to beg for my life to get people to donate. It’s sad,” Jack said. “It wasn’t quite a death sentence, but … I honestly felt like it was pretty close for me.”

Jim, on the other hand, found himself jumping in action to find a match for his brother.

“I was trying to be as professionally focused as possible,” Jim said. “I tried to focus on the things we needed to do as a family to help Jack out.”

The Chin family remains hopeful despite Jack’s low chances and has since been spreading the word about his need for a bone marrow match through the Cupertino Courier, Cupertino Patch, KTSF television channel and Chinese newspapers such as The World Journal.

According to the Be the Match program, a national marrow donor program for which the Asian American Donor Program provides registered donors, marrow transplants can only occur through closely matching Human Leukocyte Antigens. HLAs are genetically inherited white blood cell markers meaning the likelihood of finding a matching donor is higher amongst members of the same ethnicity as the patient, which in Chin’s case is Chinese.

Potential donors’ cheek cells are tested for six HLA markers to determine whether the marrow transplant will be successful. According to the AADP, which holds donor registries to find marrow matches, about 70 percent of patients with immune system diseases such as leukemia are unable to find a bone marrow match within the family.

Jim Chin has been coordinating donor registries around the Bay Area, specifically in Cupertino due to the large number of Asians in the area. According to Be the Match, only seven percent of registered donors nationwide are Asian.