According to the calendar, Phillip Moy is 48, but in some ways he’s only just celebrated his 10th birthday. It’s an achievement he was once told would be almost impossible.
In 2004, Moy was a fairly typical, definitely ambitious 37-year-old – a chartered accountant, successful entrepreneur and enthusiastic father with a three-year-old son and a wife he adored. Always athletic, he thought nothing about a minor injury from a hockey game with friends – he felt invincible, after all, like most 37-year-old men.
Over time, however, the pain got worse. Moy lost virtually all mobility in his left shoulder and began feeling sharp pains in other areas of his body. Something had clearly gone very wrong. When testing revealed his body was riddled with tumours from multiple myeloma, a blood cancer more typically found in elderly people, Moy’s world collapsed around him.
“The doctors told me I probably had just months to live,” he says. “It was shocking to discover I could go so quickly from being a normal, reasonably healthy individual to being one of the sickest people around.”
By then, Moy’s best hope for survival was a stem-cell transplant, beginning with radiation and full-body chemotherapy – a procedure with a 30 per cent chance of failure. Miraculously, he found not one, but two potential stem-cell donors.
“Two of my four sisters were perfect matches, but their stem cells could still reject my body. If [they] did, the procedure would kill me,” he says, with a matter-of-fact tone and a warm, totally uplifting smile – the contrast is awe-inspiring.
The next few years blurred into an ongoing nightmare of treatments. The transplant took place on August 11, 2005.
“Within a few minutes, my body reacted – badly. I started shaking, I had a raging fever. … It felt like I lost control of my body.”
The ordeal continued for over two hours as the two sets of cells waged a savage war for control. Finally, though, Moy’s body formed a tentative truce with his sibling’s stem cells. He eventually lost his hair, and he lost weight – but he never lost his will to live. And though the road ahead was still treacherous, painful and fraught with unforeseen complications, including bone fractures, shingles, gout, drug-induced cataracts and retina detachments that required multiple eye surgeries, it was his first step towards a return to some form of normalcy.
“I celebrate August 11 every year now, because it’s officially become my second birthday,” he says, with a twinkle in his eye and a 10-year-old’s engaging smile.
Although he was still weak, 2006 marked another milestone in Moy’s life: it was the first year Moy participated in Vancouver’s Light The Night Walk through Stanley Park, a fundraiser for The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society of Canada (LLSC). Within weeks, he’d raised almost $6,000.
“Taking part in the walk was an incredibly emotional experience,” he says. “It was the first time I truly realized that I wasn’t alone in this – that there are other people who are sick, just like I was. It’s an inclusive, multigenerational event that you can do at your own pace, so you don’t need to be athletic.”
And it’s colourful. Supporters carry a red lantern, people walking in memory of a loved one carry a gold lantern, and survivors walk with a white lantern.
“It’s a spectacular sight when all those lanterns are lit up in the dark.”
Now, a decade after his stem-cell transplant, Moy still participates in Light The Night every year, personally helping to raise over $110,000 in total. Last year his team, named Iron Will in reference to the surgically implanted steel pins that will always remain in his limbs, won the trophy for top family-and-friends team after team members collectively raised almost $30,000.
But even this wasn’t enough for Moy. Putting his diverse business skills and networking to use, he served as corporate walk chair of the Vancouver Light The Night committee that reaches out to corporate members of the community. The sheer diversity and creativity of this important part of fundraising is astonishing – and heartwarming.
Events range from pub nights and bowling competitions to educational seminars about complementary treatments like music and yoga therapy. Organizations including Industrial Alliance, UFCW, Deans Knight, Celator and Providus Mortgage make significant contributions. Others (Cactus Club and Carats, among many others) donate gift certificates and other items for silent auctions, and employers (Methanex Corp. and others) get on board to match donations raised by their corporate teams.
Even taking a car for a test drive can generate funds. In a collaboration between Ford Canada and the International Summer Night Market in Richmond, Ford donates $20 to LLSC for every person who takes a test drive. “Last summer we raised over $17,000 in four nights,” Moy says.
“I’ve been given a second chance at life; I am now cancer-free,” Moy says. “I have so many people to thank, including the doctors and nurses at VGH and BC Cancer, LLSC and their many sponsors and volunteers, family and friends, and, in particular, my sister who was my stem-cell donor, my beautiful wife and wonderful son.
"I know, together, our efforts do make a difference to the many lives that are touched by this disease. I am living proof.”
“Most people don’t realize it, but more than 40 per cent of the oncology drugs that have been approved in the past decade originated from blood cancer research,” Moy adds. “In the 1970s, my chances of survival would have been slim. Today, some types of childhood leukemia are treatable with a pill. Today, research is giving people hope.”
And hope, like research, helps put candles on people’s birthday cakes.
“I invite everyone to join me in the walk and the fight to end blood cancers.”.
