My name is Collins Ferris, I'm currently undergoing treatment for a relapse in a leukemia
cancer, more specifically a rare kind of blastoid leukemia of unspecified cell type,
going through treatment on my way to my second bone marrow transplant.
My name is Meredith and I work here at Merrimont as a group fitness instructor, I teach cycling
classes at a number of the different locations and about two years ago my daughter Elizabeth,
one of my twins, my ten year old daughter at the time, was diagnosed with stage 4 ewing
sarcoma, which began my whole family's journey through battling a nasty disease.
My name is Cliff Buckholz, came to Fort Collins about 35 years ago, started the Fort Collins
Tennis Center, we've expanded the tennis center, we now have four health clubs, one
at Sinterra, one of the north end of town, south end of town, and one centrally located.
Seven years ago we started the Chris Bird's Tennis Classic to raise money for non-smoking
lung cancer research at the University of Colorado.
Chris Bird was a good friend, a member of Merrimont and she enjoyed playing tennis.
She was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer, Chris lived for about two years and then passed
away.
Several years ago another good friend, Gary Kaiser, was a non-smoker, a serious exerciser
and he was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer.
We put Gary in touch with Dr. Bunn at the University of Colorado and Dr. Bunn and his
team had been working on a procedure, a drug that they had taken through the FDA.
Gary Kaiser fit that protocol and within one year he was cancer free.
It was a miracle.
Gary Bird and Gary Kaiser and I, we were celebrating Gary's good health and it was
decided to expand the Chris Bird's Tennis Classic into golf, cycling, running, Zumba.
It was also decided to split the proceeds between lung cancer research and the new cancer
center at Puddle Valley.
It's fairly aggressive and have needed to take aggressive treatments and movements towards
hopeful cure and needed to go through bone marrow transplant last year, September 10th.
So my sister was a perfect match for me.
So everything was extremely positive and unfortunately everything went well through the procedure.
Everything went well prior and then 10 months later the cancer came back and I'm here again.
So round two of high dose, high treatments of chemo and getting ready for round two of
bone marrow transplant.
They gave her a 7% chance to live and 10 year old girl with a 7% chance to live.
It's not good, but the doctors that we finally got hooked up with were so good in the fact
that they weren't just able to treat the disease, but in the same, in the next breath
of telling you that horrible statistic, they looked at me and said, there's no reason for
you to not assume that your child's in that 7%.
And so that's kind of how, that's been the battle cry since then.
And so she went through seven rounds of the most intense chemotherapy you can imagine.
That was impatient and it was horrendous.
Then she went through bone marrow transplant and then she did 31 days of radiation.
She went into 11 months of remission and then she said, mommy, my shoulder hurts and I can
remember walking down the stairs and just having that feeling in my stomach going, okay,
we need to get in and it happened again.
We've all been touched by cancer and it's a terrible lonely feeling when you hear those
words, you have cancer.
The new cancer center will be a resource for patients and family.
It will allow us to bring the top oncologist to the area and it will also help us to expand
our technology to fight this awful disease.
You know, what we really need more of is more efficiency, more collaboration.
What that will do is really provide a ton for the patients and our families to go through
these times together and really hopefully cut back on the amount of time that we have
to go through in hospitals, in meetings, in treatments and really try to hit this one
stop shop that can take care of all of those needs at one time.
Northern Colorado needs a center like this for cancer patients to fight the battle.
The families need the local support to be right there where we need them, when we need
them just down the road so that everyone, the families, the kids, the patients can fight
the battle that's ahead of them.
As a patient who's been on and off for two years, the last thing I want to do is spend
my time in the hospital and I want to be able to live the life that I lived before while
I'm going through these treatments and hopefully getting to a cure of my cancer.
I found the hardest thing is saying, I can't do this alone, and asking, and the kindness
and the generosity and just the vastness of these people's hearts, yeah, I could never
do it alone.
I'm very excited about the New Cancer Center.
It's not only going to be a resource for patients and their families, but it's also going to
give us the opportunity to bring some of the top oncologists to Fort Collins.
It's also going to give us the opportunity to have new technology, new ways to fight
cancer.
It's going to be one of the top centers in the United States.
It certainly is going to serve all of Northern Colorado and it's something that we've needed
very badly.
This year we raised $62,000, our goal this year is $75,000.
Thank you very much for participating and let's see if we can hit that goal.
Thanks a lot.
