After 39 days in the hospital, Darryl went home January 10, 2015.

There will be a donor drive on Sunday, February 8, 2015 from 10:00 am to 12:00 pm at:

Temple Etz Chaim
1080 East Janss Road
Thousand Oaks, CA 91360

Directions from State Route 23:

• Take the Janss exit from State Route 23 Freeway
• Take the Janss exit from State Route 23 Freeway
• Take the Janss exit from State Route 23 Freeway
• Take the Janss exit from State Route 23 Freeway

Temple Etz Chaim is located in the Northeast section of large parking lot shared by the Temple and a church. The parking lot entrance is off Whitecliff Road. Get directions from your home to Temple Etz Chaim via Google Maps.

If you have not been tested this is an opportunity for you and others to come and be tested by simply having the inside of your cheek swabbed.

Again, the family thanks you all for your positive affirmations and we especially thank those who have returned their kits to Be The Match®. Please continue to do so. As we have previously stated, if we cannot find a donor-match for Darryl, perhaps you will be lucky enough to be a donor-match for someone else who is waiting for this miracle of life.

On November 18, 2014, just two days before his 44th birthday, after another routine blood test, Darryl tested positive for leukemia. This was a crushing setback and not something that was expected to happen so quickly by his doctors. It’s year two, and Darryl must return to the hospital to start another round of chemotherapy. The upcoming treatment cycles will involve stronger drugs (which mean stronger after effects) and 30 more days of hospitalization. Although understandably upset and disappointed, Darryl’s health remains stable and he is still mentally very strong.

Darryl’s best hope for cure remains the transplant. At this point, with time working against him, a match or even a less effective partial-match must be found. This means a peripheral blood stem cells (PBSC) match to replace/revive his damaged white blood cells.

In late 2013, after a short vacation in California, Darryl went back to Hawaii not feeling 100%. He thought that he had caught a cold from someone in the mainland or on the plane. After running a higher fever for four days, he went to his doctor who ran a routine blood test which revealed a terrible truth; he had leukemia.

There are over a dozen different types of leukemia. Darryl has AML (acute myeloid leukemia), which is not the worst kind of leukemia, but not the best in terms of cure rates. To complicate matters, Darryl has a rare gene which lowers the success rate of stand-alone chemotherapy treatments. This makes his leukemia the worst of its type and why a transplant is such a critical part in his fight for a lasting cure to his disease.

For the next six months, with support of his family, friends, and Emily he battled through 5 cycles of chemotherapy, which put him into a brief remission.