My ongoing battle against Leukemia

My name is Shane DePerini, I am 25 years old and just a couple years ago doctors told me I could die with in 10 days, but we'll get back to that in a little bit. I am the owner of GlowStreet, LLC; a licensed clothing retail and entertainment company currently based in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. We were officially trademarked in 2011 with the USPTO but have been in existence since 2009. Our clothing line is an urban attire consisting of mainly snapbacks, beanies, hoodies, crewneck sweaters, t-shirts, tank tops and more. The entertainment aspect of our business, we have partnered in, been a sponsor of, or self thrown a total of over 70+ nightclub and big venue events. Our website GlowStreet.Com  has been viewed in 104 countries and all 50 states, multiple times. With the hopes of inspiring others, I would like to take a second to share my journey and story. My focus and dedication tends to help people get through their own difficult situations when seeing things through a new light. In 2009, I was living in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, working as a contractors assistant for a few years and began frequently getting unexplainably sick with chronic pain, nausea and vomiting, which made doing that kind of work near to impossible, to do on a daily bases. After going to the hospital multiple times and seeing many different doctors, without having medical insurance they would do the bare minimal testing with no results of my illness. As my medical bills piled up, the inability to work a steady work week and with no clear diagnosis, I couldn't get any government assistance and had no choice but to move to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina where all my family was living. I began changing my diet, working out regularly, but still periodically getting sick just not as often. The healthier I got, the stronger I felt and that's when I was finally able to begin marketing my brand. I strategically set up photoshoots with all the attractive college girls in the area that had a decent sized following. As they would share their photoshoots online, on their social medias, wearing GlowStreet clothing, my website began getting a lot of web traffic causing GlowStreet quickly become very well known locally. The current number one promoter of night life in Myrtle Beach at the time contacted me about my company promoting and sponsoring some of his events he had coming up. Taking it as a huge opportunity to showcase my brand in front of hundreds of thousands of tourist on flyers, my promoters wearing it promoting on the blvd, and it being worn on stage at the night club events, I jumped all over the idea.Having a strong passion for the music industry, I signed a couple local talented artist and DJs to the entertainment aspect of the company. As I did more events, my company grew larger and I was able to network with various other event companies in which I was able to book my artists on many massive events at the House of Blues opening for artist such as Wale, Waka Flocka Flame and Roscoe Dash 2.0. I saw the opportunity of putting talented artists wearing GlowStreet with beautiful back up dancers wearing it as well, performing in front of crowds of 4,000+ screaming fans could only further to excel my brand. My company began growing so fast that we were scheduled to throw seven solo events a week, one event every single night, for the whole spring break month of March and first week of April. Those events also don't include the scheduled concert series events my artist were supposed to do at House of Blues again that year during spring Fusion Series, as well. Finally, feeling like all my hard work was finally going to pay off, big time. I felt like I was on top of the world.....except I was still getting sick and the harder I worked the sicker it seemed I was getting, even more so frequently. It was February 2014, one month before spring and we were prepping and getting everything in line for the big GlowStreet spring break line up, when I began to have severe chronic lower back pain on top of the already existing nausea, vomiting and fatigue. Still not having insurance and being told in the past that it was all in my head, I neglected to go to the hospital. By mid February, the pain was so intense I couldn't lay down for longer periods than an hour, I took multiple hot showers to try to relieve the chronic aches and began taking over the counter pain relievers (which was a big deal because I hated swallowing any form of medication.) As the days went by the pain worsened, it got to the point where I couldn't lay down for more than 5 mins, if at all, I was forced to try to gain my sleep by leaning up against the wall, no amount of hot showers relieved anything anymore, heating pads had zero impact and the over the counter pain medications seemed to become like they weren't being taken at all. My girlfriend insisted and begged me to go to the hospital since the beginning of February when the pain first started, and I explained to her I didn't have insurance, the money or the time to deal with it with spring break right around the corner. By February 23rd, I was having incredibly terrible chest pains, excruciating back aches and the pain got so intense it radiated up to my neck to the point I couldn't turn my head at all. After my girlfriend found me balled up on the floor crying from being in so much pain, she stuck me in the car at 1am and said "if we don't go to the ER, right now, you're going to end up dying, Shane."After getting me to the emergency room at the local hospital they drew my blood and shortly after that the doctor came into the room to reveal news that would change my life forever. He sat on the side of the hospital bed in a very serious manor and said "Shane, an average persons white blood cell count is normally between 4,000-10,000, typically someone with a bad infection has a white cell count around 20,000...and yours, Shane, is 355,000." (not a typo, three hundred and fifty five thousand) As my girlfriend and I sat there in shock and confusion, we asked what exactly does that mean, and he began to tell us that a count that high is commonly found in leukemia patients having a blast crisis. The doctor said "With your white blood cell count being so high, your blood is basically sludge right now and if you were to cut yourself with a knife the blood wouldn't even drip." He also explained the chest pains I was having were actually what would be considered as mini heart attacks. The doctor told us their hospital doesn't have the proper recourses or means to treat me that they would need to rush transfer me to North Carolina's Duke University Hospital or to the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston. After the doctor left the room, I began to tell my girlfriend I can't be transferred 100 miles away with everything I've worked for about to be happening, right here, in one week. I also then naively stated to her that this is a hospital and it is their job to treat me and my condition here, that I'm not going anywhere. She bolted out of the room crying and went and told the doctor I wasn't going to let them transfer me. The doctor returned and began to explain the severity of the situation where as that I needed to be at a hospital that has a dedicated cancer unit and that if I decide to refuse a transfer and proper treatment that I would be dead within 10 to 30 days. Realizing that all the hard work that would have paid off would be useless if I wasn't a live to be apart of it, I agreed to be transferred to the closer of the two hospitals and went to MUSC. They immediately rush transferred me and put me directly into the intensive care unit where they put a pick line in my neck and began filtering my sludge blood out with new blood.After running test and doing a bone marrow biopsy they diagnosed me with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia and determined I was having a leukemic blast crisis. Further testing showed that my A.L.L. had progressed from having C.M.L.+ph (Chronic Myeloid Leukemia with Philadelphia Chromosome) for at least 3 years prior to having this blast crisis. After stabilizing me with new clean blood, they surgically embedded a dual power port in my chest to begin intensive IV chemotherapy treatment. It took a real toll on my body, mental state, and caused a huge set back for my company. Being transferred 100 miles away without a proper team in place to run things, by the first week of March all of our events began to fall apart. The people I chose to run point, had no clue how much work it was, didn't have passion for the brand like I did, lost vision of what was being built, event tickets weren't being distributed to promoters properly or efficiently, promoters weren't being paid correctly for selling event tickets, the venue owners weren't used to the new faces I put in charge, other promotion companies swarmed in like vultures and while I was going through the intense treatments I was dealing with I could barely coordinate phone calls to keep things organized. I was also in charge of all the inventory ordering and hat embroidering so as our current stock sold out, the selling of inventory came to a slow halt. I was also the only one who shipped online orders so being in the hospital for over 200 days out of that year and not being able to fulfill online orders we were limited to use an online print to order company for selling clothing, and without there being a print to order online hat retailer, we ended up having to remove our hats from our online store completely.I had many rounds of intensive IV chemotherapy, countless chemotherapy spinal taps, multiple treatments of full body radiation, stripped my identity and lost all of my hair two seperate timesI've experienced various neutropenic fevers spiking as high as 105 degrees, the high white blood cell count during my blast crisis caused a retinal hemorrhage causing permanent loss of vision in one of my eyes, and though I was fortunate enough to have a bone marrow transplant I still have to take oral chemotherapy every single morning and night for the rest of my life because the Philadelphia chromosome in my body mutates my bone marrow into leukemic cells and the oral chemotherapy helps to control it. I have chronic leg and back pain due to a seperated disc in my back that causes nerve damage to my legs. I am still on antibiotic steroids and immunosuppressant transplant medications. At least once a week have to drive 100 miles each way to MUSC's cancer center, for treatment, I am currently labeled disabled, and with all that being said, every time I'm admitted back into the hospital, I display my brand in the hospital room like its my own personal store front.Displayed with multiple hats and shirt showcased and I focus on selling inventory to nurses and hospital staff. Then every time I get back out of the hospital I come home to try and build my brand from exactly were I left off and plan and throw night club events.Nothing keeps me more focused and fighting in this world, than two things, 1.) My girlfriend, Autumn, the loving angel that saved my life.2.) The strive to make GlowStreet grow to the exponential heights I know the brand can reach, regardless of my current health situation.I share my story, not for the donations, but to inspire others to never give up.

You can follow me on twitter @iHateSJD, as well as I cover a lot of the building of my company and my current cancer journey on my personal instagram at instagram.com/iHateSJD

Follow @GlowStreet across all social media, as well.