Fund For A CML Victim

Sawasdee Krub ( Hello). My name is Pasusant Wattanaboonya , 54 years old, married without kids. I was diagnosed with chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) at 35 years old.

My mental health got worse due to the stress of the symptoms and the family financial condition I was experiencing. These caused me fever, headache, fatigue and exhausted on and off for 19 years.
After taking more than a year of Hydroxyurea treatment the doctor changed the treatment to a more efficient method of subcutaneous injection. I had given myself the injections for 4 years. Until early 2003, my doctor had told me about a new and effective medicine and about the GIPAP.
GIPAP was established to help CML victims without any charges. However, the qualified victims will have to go through the committee’s consideration to ensure their qualifications had met with the GIPAP’s requirements.

The doctor had kindly arranged and processed all necessary documents to GIPAP. I was very lucky to be successfully accepted by them. I started taking this new capsule since March 2003 till the present. The last 3 results of my routine blood check showed that Bcr-Abl was negative which meant a good sign to recover. I hope that I can recover if I see the doctor routinely and strictly take the medicines as prescribed.

I am one of the longest survivors as a CML patient and I have been invited to be a committee of Thai CML Patient Group which is an active CML patients advocacy organization in Thailand with 2,000 members. It is a volunteer work for me to share , motivate and support both patients and care-givers .

Last year, I initiated a small project called “ Fund For Life” in order to raise fund to help one CML patient as she needed urgent financial support to cover the high cost of treatment for her eye vision problem as a result of severe side effects. I used social media and the event of World CML Day to tell the story and seek the sponsorship for raising funds.

As an unemployed CML patient and also be an active volunteer , I need the money to support the financial problem for poor CML victims and other blood cancer patients including myself. The cost of drug is very high approximately at US$ 3,500 per month or US$ 42,000 per year per one CML patient. Although, the cost of drug is now subsidized by our government’s medical care programs but there are some patients who need to take a very special medicine which is not in the list of subsidy so they have to pay the high bill by themselves.

For me, I am going to stop taking medication next month due to the effectiveness of Target Therapy and the good responses of molecular testing. I have to enter clinical trial program with the RQ-PCR molecular monitoring every month at least 2-3 years and it costs about US$ 100 – 300 per test and definitely I will be in the financial difficulty.

If you trust me and really want to help me and other poor CML patients who faced with the financial trouble for cancer treatment, please help donate!

I would like to take this opportunity to thank you very much to everyone for your kind support.