superamit:

Many of you have asked, so here’s what’s going on with me.

WHAT HAPPENED BEFORE

• 8/1979: Born. Grew up in CT, built a killer eraser collection, fell in love with computers.
• Left college to start a company. Fell hard. Fled to India for 3 months.
• Started 2nd company. Learned to be an adult. Fell in love with NYC.
• Moved to SF, discovered burritos & some of my fave people on Earth.
• 9/2011: Got diagnosed with Leukemia!
• Cried. Went through 3 cycles of chemo. Hurt. Thought hard about what I want out of life. Grew up a second time.

TODAY

… After over 100 drives organized by friends, family, and strangers, celebrity call-outs, a bazillion reblogs (7000+!), tweets, and Facebook posts, press, fundraising and international drives organized by tireless friends, and a couple painful false starts, I’ve got a 10/10 matched donor!

You all literally helped save my life. (And the lives of many others.)

WHAT HAPPENS NEXT

Tomorrow, I’ll be admitted to Dana Farber in Boston for 4-5 weeks.

First I’ll get a second Hickman line to allow direct access to my heart (for meds and for nutrients if I’m not able to eat). Over the next week, the docs blast my body with a stiff chemo cocktail to try and eradicate all traces of cancer cells. In the process, the immune system I was born with, and my body’s ability to make blood, are destroyed.

Next Friday, I get my donor’s stem cells by IV. I start on immunosuppressants to prevent my body from rejecting them (I’ll be on them for 12-18 months). For these weeks I’ve no immune system, so I’m severely vulnerable to viruses and bacteria. My hospital room and hallway become my world.

Meanwhile, the stem cells make their way to my bone marrow and, with some luck, start producing platelets, red blood cells, and white blood cells. At this point, my blood type changes to the blood type of my donor. And my blood will now have my donor’s DNA, not my own.

This is science fiction stuff. I can hardly believe it’s even possible, and there’s lots of chances for things to go wrong. It’s frightening.

AFTER THE TRANSPLANT

Recovery to a new state of “normal” takes about a year, but there’s a few storm clouds hovering:

• My immune system is new, like a baby’s. I’m prone to getting sick.
• Just as with any organ transplant, there’s a chance of rejection. Except in this case, it’s my blood that’s the foreign body, and it touches every organ. They call it graft-vs-host-disease and it can cause health issues and organ complications for the rest of my life.
• Successful transplant or not, Leukemia can relapse. Stubborn mofo.

Overall, 75% of AML transplant patients survive year one, 50% make it through year five. My odds are a little better since I’m young.

THE GREAT NEWS

I’ve got a long road ahead. But I’ve got a donor & amazing family & friends. A few months ago I didn’t have many options. Today I have a plan.

I am alive. I start tomorrow. Wish me luck!

Thank you.

BigAss Santa (Taken with instagram)

Check out my 2011 album picks on the Hype Machine, or create your own!

superamit:

Two weeks ago I got a call from my doctor, who I’d gone to see the day before because I’d been feeling worn out and was losing weight, and wasn’t sure why.

He was brief: “Amit, you’ve got Acute Leukemia. You need to enter treatment right away.”

I was terrified. I packed a backpack full of clothes, went to the hospital as he’d instructed, and had transfusions through the night to allow me to take a flight home at 7am the next day. I Googled acute leukemia as I lay in my hospital bed, learning that if it hadn’t been caught, I’d have died within weeks.

—

I have a couple more months of chemo to go, then the next step is a bone marrow transplant. As Jay and Tony describe below, minorities are severely underrepresented in the bone marrow pool, and I need help.

A few ways to help:

1. If you’re South Asian, get a free test by mail. You rub your cheeks with a cotton swab and mail it back. It’s easy.
2. If you’re in NYC, you can go to this event my friends are putting on.
3. If you know any South Asians (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, Maldives, or Sri Lanka), please point ‘em to the links above.

*NEW* Organize a donor drive near you (the most helpful thing you could possibly do!) email 100kcheeks@gmail.com. They’ll send you kits, flyers, tell you what to say, and make the whole process easy cheesy.

jayparkinsonmd:

My friend Amit Gupta founded my favorite photography site Photojojo. A few weeks ago, he was diagnosed with leukemia. Amit is one of the nicest, most genuine, most creative people you could ever meet. Prior to founding the awesome Photojojo, he also co-founded Jelly in 2006 in NYC, a coworking community, that’s now spread to 60 cities across the world and helped spark the coworking revolution. It looks like Amit will need a bone marrow transplant quite soon. We can help him with that.

tony b:

Unlike blood transfusions, finding a genetic match for bone marrow that his body will accept is no easy task. The national bone marrow registry has 9.5 million records on file, yet the chances of someone from South Asian descent of finding a match are only 1 in 20,000.

This is where we come in. We’re going to destroy those odds.

How? By finding and registering as many people of South Asian descent as we possibly can.

Tests are easy– a simple swab of the cheek. If you’re a match, the donation involves an outpatient procedure. It’s not fun, but it’s not dangerous either. And doing it could save a life.

We are encouraging anyone of South Asian descent to take a test to see if you’re a match. 

You can get a free test by mail, or, if you’re in New York, you can join us Friday, October 14th for a special party to rally support.

We’ll have test kits on hand at the party, as well as music, booze, and maybe even a photo booth. It will, for the first time, combine a House 2.0-style party with a New Work City-style party, and if you’ve ever been to either, you know they are always something special.

Please spread the word and please do everything you can to help Amit beat leukemia. He’s a superstar.

Much thanks to Tony and pals for organizing this event, and EVERYONE who’s been tweeting and reblogging.

Please help get the word out any way you can. My life quite literally depends on it.

david-noel:

I’m happy to say that this is the case.

Thank you for everything, Steve!

(Source: sweepmeup)

Rest in Peace Steve. Here’s to the crazy ones.

jmak:

Thanks, Steve.

Posting designs like this one makes me paranoid, because I can’t shake the feeling that it’s not original. I enjoyed the process regardless, but please let me know if somebody else beat me to the idea!

Thoughts?

Amit being Orange on Flickr.

Amit is really the most friendliest and upbeat dude I have ever met. When I was his roommate in San Francisco, he not only let me use the Photojojo office to work on my projects, he also lend me his orange hoodie so I could wear it on Queensday (or SF’s version of it). This is him wearing that same hoodie outside of Haltun.

Amit, you can beat this!

david-noel:

My friend Amit was just diagnosed with leukemia. He is one of the most positive, creative, caring, fun-loving people I know. Right now, Amit is in the hospital at home in Connecticut receiving treatment and far from friends in SF (where he lives) and NYC (where he used to live). We can’t visit him yet because of germs and the type of treatment he’s getting, so we’re stuck with the internet to send him good vibes, laughs, and hugs. Please help out!

Amit loves: photos, jokes, mac & cheese, bright colors.

Send photos, cards, candygrams, etc. to him:

Yale New Haven Hospital
Amit Gupta 11 220
Simlow Cancer Center 11 North
20 York St.
New Haven, CT 06511

Oh, also: fuckyeahamitgupta.tumblr.com.

P.S. This photo is from brunch at Katherine & Tony’s place in SF c. 2008. Grace took the pic. (via Chrysanthe)

Amit is the man. Hands down one of the friendliest, warmest, supportive and bestest people I had the chance to meet in San Francisco. We actually met for the first time in Berlin during a dinner with some tech folks but get the chance the catch up with him whenever in SF. I was shocked and at the same time inspired learning about Amit’s leukemia. He’s approaching the disease with his ever-positive attitude and I’m confident he will beat that fucker in the face. 

Let’s all help him with that. Send him warm thoughts the digital or physical way to the addresses above. 

We’re rooting for you, Amit!