Hsiang K. "Frank" Fei
Hsiang K. “Frank” Fei was born in Hua-Lien, a small east-coast town in Taiwan facing the Pacific ocean. Frank spent the first four years of elementary education in Hua-Lien. But his father’s job relocated the family to Taipei when he was in fifth grade. The new school in Taipei posed a big challenge for him in the beginning because the academic standards there were much higher than that of the schools in Hua-lien. He did poorly at his new school, but was able to gradually catch up and eventually finish high school.
After high school, Frank attended college and majored in automatic control engineering. After graduation, he served in the Taiwanese army and later worked in an electrical component company. He then decided to come to the U.S. to enter a master’s degree program. After completing a master’s degree in Mobile, Alabama, Frank was offered a job in Dallas.
While everything in Frank’s life seemed exciting and promising, he was diagnosed with stage 4 Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma in 1998. Over the next few year’s, Frank experienced a physical and emotional battle with all of the treatments, drugs, and tests he had to undergo. On top of that, he was laid off from work twice.
In 2002, a doctor from Baylor Hospital approached him with the possibility of having a bone marrow transplant (BMT). After some research, Frank decided to have the transplant as his last resort to survive. His sister graciously donated stem cells to him. Following the transplant, Frank spent 3 months in the hospital and struggled with several complications from the procedure.
After recovering, Frank decided to make a career change to a health-related profession, hoping to help others who experience similar events in life. For the past two years, he has taken 10 classes at Richland, making straight A’s.
Frank finds learning to be very rewarding loves to help my fellow classmates with what he has learned. His new career path allows him to offer encouragement and support to others who are receiving chemotherapy or are recovering from BMT. Frank’s ultimate goal is to contribute to the prevention and treatment of cancers.