San Francisco Chronicle
By: Bill Workman
Friday December 29, 2000

Since September 17, 1997, Louie Bonpua has made it a point never to put off until tomorrow anything that can be done today.

That was the day Bonpua's doctor phoned with the terrifying news that he had been diagnosed with chronic myelogenous leukemia, a virulent form of the blood cancer that interferes with organ functions and in time can kill.

For more than a year, the 36-year-old Sunnyvale systems project manager underwent chemotherapy to bring the disease under control, then another year of self-administered Interferon injections -- all the while regretting he had put off so many times his goal of competing in a triathlon to test his mettle as an amateur athlete.

An accomplished swimmer who had competed in high school and college, he saw his days and nights now filled instead with the overwhelming struggle just to stay alive.

"You're thinking you're not expected to live long, and now it's too late to do anything," said the 1992 graduate of the University of San Francisco, where he majored in information systems management.

By the early summer of 1998, he was so weakened by his cancer that he was spending long stretches of time in a wheelchair, barely hanging onto a job in Silicon Valley that he eventually left in despair.

"My boss had taken my management position away because I was running to the bathroom and vomiting all the time, " he said. "I was losing weight and so tired that I'd sleep in my car at lunchtime and go back to work."

One day, a friend who wanted to cheer him up took Bonpua to the Marina Green to watch the finish of the annual Escape From Alcatraz triathlon, in which hundreds of participants swim 1.5 miles in frigid bay waters, ride 18 miles on a bike and finish up with an 8.5-mile run.

"As I watched, I promised myself that if I could get better, I would not waste any more time," Bonpua said.

It was a promise he has more than made good on, with the help of an experimental drug called STI-571, and friends in the San Francisco chapter of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. He has now become an inspirational speaker and role model in the nonprofit organization's attempts to educate the public and raise money for research to combat the related diseases.

In the past 13 months, Bonpua has taken part in a half-dozen triathlons, including the 2000 Escape From Alcatraz last May, and is now training to compete in August in one of the most grueling of athletic challenges, the Canada Iron Man: A 2.4-mile lake swim, 112-mile bike ride and 26.2-mile marathon run.

He is one of 49 Bay Area amateur athletes preparing for the Iron Man event under the leukemia society's special fund-raising Team-in-Training program. He is the lone participant actively coping with the disease, although several are in extended remission, and many others have friends or relatives afflicted with it. To participate, each person pledges to raise $7,500, most of which goes toward medical research, in exchange for the program's professional coaching by ex-Olympians.

Bonpua is proud that his current employer, San Jose-based Cadence Design Systems, and his co-workers have been not only accepting of his condition, but also supportive of his fund-raising in behalf of leukemia research. The company, he said, has already contributed $3,500 as a sponsor of his Iron Man effort.

He credits his use of the drug STI-571, which has shown surprising success in early research trials, for returning his blood to normal white cell counts after four months and helping to restore his muscle mass, energy levels and overall sense of well-being.

''This is the best I have felt in three years," said Bonpua. He said he had gained 20 pounds since he was accepted by Oregon researchers as one of only 550 patients worldwide with myelogenous leukemia resistant to traditional treatment to be given the experimental drug this year.

Bonpua promotes the work of the leukemia society and recounts his personal fight to overcome the ravages of the disease on his amusingly named Web site, www.shrimplouie.com.

Nonetheless, he is not considered to be out of the woods, and it may be necessary for him to undergo a stem cell transplantation in another year or so if tests show, contrary to currently favorable signs, that he is not in remission after all.

If that becomes necessary, he knows that as a Filipino American, he would face the added difficulty of finding a suitable donor in view of the relatively low number of Pacific Islanders registered as potential bone marrow donors in the United States.

The affable Bonpua prefers not to think about that possibility, instead keeping his sights on the near future and preparations for his Canadian adventure.

Among those preparations will be a dip he and several other Team-in- Training members plan to take New Year's Day in San Francisco Bay to test their bodies against the freezing waters.

"I don't understand why we should be doing it on New Year's Day after all the celebrating the night before," said Bonpua, who nonetheless does not intend to be a partygoer himself.

"I'm very cautious about all those crazy drivers around now," he said. "I really worry I'll be killed in a traffic accident long before I die of leukemia."

Bill Workman writes about people from the Peninsula and South Bay; he can be reached at (650) 961-2499 or by fax at (650) 961-5023. E-mail This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or write him c/o The Chronicle, 2425 Leghorn St., Mountain View CA 94043.

©2001 San Francisco Chronicle