Abby’s heritage is Filipino and Vietnamese, but, growing up, she became increasingly interested in Japanese culture—from udon noodles to manga comic books. Her favorite subject is social studies and she enjoys learning about Japanese history and important figures.  

Just before Abby’s 14th birthday, she fainted twice before she was rushed to the hospital by her uncle and grandma, with whom she lives with in San Leandro, along with her mother, Marilyn. 

“I blacked out. I don't recall anything,” Abby describes her incident, “I didn't know what was happening. I thought I just fell down—had an accident or something.”

It turned out Abby had an extremely low white blood count, and she was diagnosed with leukemia. Her doctors recommended she start treatment immediately. 

“The average person has forty thousand white blood cells in their body, but she had like five thousand,” says Marilyn. “They needed to give her platelets immediately to get her blood cells up and the treatment was aggressive in the first three months.”   

Following her diagnosis in 2019, Abby was frequently in and out of the hospital. Marilyn says, “Every single week, there was some sort of setback. There weren'’t any medicines they gave her that she could handle well. She had spiraling psychosis from one of the steroid medications, and for three months, she didn’t remember who she was. Every hour, if she went to sleep, on the whiteboard in the hospital room, I would write encouraging messages like ‘You will be fine. You’re doing good.’”

“Every morning I’d wake up,” says Abby, “I’d see a motivational message on the whiteboard like, ‘You are Abby. You are in the hospital. You’re fighting cancer. Everyone loves you here.’ At the time, I felt very confused and out of place. It was very scary. I would wake up and try to pull out my port because of how intense my dreams were.”   

As a single parent, Marilyn felt helpless. “I’m generally very optimistic. But when you go through hardships like this, it’s difficult to stay positive,” she says. “Because every day, you’re waiting on results, testing, procedures, treatments, and they never really have an end deadline to anything. You never know how long it’s going to take.”    

It would end up taking a little over two years of treatment for Abby to become cancer free. Marilyn and Abby became quite close with Abby’s care team at UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital Oakland. Every day, they played board games, sang songs, and danced a lot. They also made Valentine's Day cards and cookies for the nurses. And for Halloween, they gave out treats. Marilyn says, "Doing those things made every day go by faster, and we started to kind of enjoy being there because people were also enjoying us. So that made it easier."   

Another bright spot was knowing that Abby would get a wish. “When we found out she had a wish, it felt really good, like more than we could ask for” Marilyn notes, “because we didn’t know how long the treatment would go on and when you’re there, it feels like forever that we’re going to be doing this. The wish was such an amazing thing to look forward to. We didn’t know what it would be, but we knew we were going to be so happy to do it. Anything out of the hospital beds and away from the crazy wires and attachments she was stuck to all the time."   

Abby’s first choice was to go to Japan and experience the culture firsthand. Unfortunately, in 2020, two things stood in her way—her compromised immune system and the COVID-19 international travel ban. So, once Make-A-Wish resumed planning domestic travel wishes, Abby decided to go to Hawaii, where she could see the Japanese influences on the island culture as well as visit her family that lives there. In February 2022, Abby, Marilyn, and Marilyn’s boyfriend were able to make the trip. 

“During COVID, you couldn’t do anything,” Marilyn recalls. “So going to Hawaii and just being outside and spending time together and not having to think about anything else, that in itself was already a pretty amazing experience.” 

Abby used the trip as a time to heal—enjoying the warm waters and swimming the best she could, just getting used to moving her limbs again. “For her to go out and walk around, go in the pool and the ocean, it was a lot of activity for her,” says Marilyn. 

In Hawaii, Abby enjoyed a visit to the Polynesian culture center, where she got to see fire dancing. She also had a chance to see udon noodles hand pulled fresh in front of her and then eat them! And she got some souvenirs at Japanese shops and comic stores. 

“It gave me a lot of enjoyment and happiness. I loved every moment of it,” Abby says. 

“It was a lot of first-time experiences,” says Marilyn. “Our first time on a jet ski and first time ziplining. So, we were like nervous together, but excited together. It got us to do things together and try out all these fun, cool adventures.” 

For Abby, the best part of the trip was the time with her mom. “My mom has been there, every moment she has been there, during my surgeries, at my bedside when I was bedridden, always supporting me along the way,” she says. “You realize how important family is and how many supporters you have during tough moments.” 

Thank you, Diablo Subaru of Walnut Creek, for generously adopting Abby's wish.