LEUKEMIA SURVIVOR CREDITS RESEARCH FOR SAVING HER LIFE
She did everything right — exercised, ate healthy foods. In fact, Jeannette Castillo went the extra distance, devoting her career to promoting proper nutrition.
When she marked her 30th birthday and her second wedding anniversary at the Tom Baker Cancer Centre then, Castillo was understandably in shock.
“I learned that a critical illness can happen to anyone, at anytime in their life,” she says of her fight with B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia, also known as ALL. “I thought about all those people who go through this without the kind of family support I enjoyed.”
A decade later, Castillo is a powerful advocate for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society of Canada ( llscanada.org), involved in fundraising and working with the organization as a First Connection volunteer, which helps patients and families deal with the disease.
She also regularly speaks out on the importance of research and new treatments, which have helped her to defy the three per cent survival rate she was given when first diagnosed in 2007.
On Saturday, Castillo will join fellow participants in the annual Light the Night Walk, hosted by the society’s Prairies chapter. It begins at 6:30 p.m. at Eau Claire Market (the event is free and open to the public, for more information go to lightthenight. ca).
Participants will carry illuminated lanterns — red for supporters, white for patients and survivors — in support of the more than 138,000 Canadians affected by blood cancer.
“I’m living proof of how important it is to discover new treatments for the disease,” says Castillo, who relies on a drug that inhibits the genetic abnormality in her leukemia cells that promotes their growth. “Without this drug, I wouldn’t be here today.”
When she first heard the news, Castillo’s life couldn’t have been busier, or more exciting and promising. Newly married to Ryan Jensen, the two were thinking of their family plans. “I was working and finishing business school,” she says. “I was thinking that soon, Ryan and I would be in a good position to start a family.”
The demanding schedule left her exhausted, which was out of the ordinary for the usually energetic fitness buff.
“I’d go to bed at 8 p.m. and wake up 10 hours later, still feeling tired,” she says of the months before learning she had a form of blood cancer.
She pointed out bruising on her body to her sister Maria Koch, a Calgary registered nurse.
“She told me to go to my family physician, not a walk-in clinic,” says Castillo.
Once she saw her doctor, the wheels of medicine turned quickly.
“I was diagnosed on a Tuesday, the next day was told what kind of leukemia I had and then on the Thursday, was starting treatment,” she says, which included chemotherapy and radiation.
Her three siblings were not only willing to see if they were a match for the stem cell transplant Castillo needed immediately, they “treated it like a competition,” she says with a laugh. “All of them wanted to be the one.”
After the transplant provided by her older brother Isidro Castillo, and subsequent treatment, she did well for seven months, before her cancer returned.
“I really had to slow down,” says Castillo, a Saskatchewan native who played a variety of sports growing up and studied nutrition at SAIT.
“You learn from this that you have to take care of yourself first, before you can help anyone else,” says Castillo, who also credits her parents Sid and Nenita for providing emotional support.
“I remember my husband telling me how beautiful I was even when I lost my hair and my family coming from Saskatchewan and as far as London, England, to visit me throughout my treatments,” she says. “It breaks my heart thinking that some people face this alone.”
Over the past few years, she has placed well in fitness competitions and participated in a variety of activity-related fundraisers.
“This is my mission now,” says Castillo of her advocacy work with the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society.
“I cherish every day of my life,” says the now 40-year-old as she heads into another decade of life filled with gratitude and hope.
“Without this drug, I wouldn’t have got this time,” she says with a teary smile. “The research that has been done and continues to be done is saving lives.”