The Faces Behind the Play It Forward Fundraiser

There are approximately 40,000 people diagnosed with a rare cancer every year. So often we forget that every one of those 40,000 sufferers has a life filled with friends and family, and there is a person struggling to find treatments for their disease. The Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC) is looking for treatments and cures for these types of cancer. The women who put together the Play it Forward fundraiser want to help raise money and awareness for MSKCC, and they need your help.

Matt Alford

Rose Alford’s husband Matt is the reason she asked her friends to help her put together the wonderful Play it Forward Shootout and Fundraiser. Here’s Matt Alford’s story:

My wrestling match with rare cancer began 10 years ago when a grapefruit-sized tumor was discovered on my pancreas.  Not good (!) and my early education into pancreatic cancer led me to believe I would not be attending too many reunions of the pancreatic support group at Anschutz.  Conventional treatments over the next few years were ineffective so surgery became my only option and 6 major surgeries later I am reaching the end of that particular line of “treatment” as well.  As my last surgeon said my insides “look like Swiss cheese” at this point, and boy do they feel like it!  Fortunately my rare cancer has also been slow to grow, and I have repeatedly managed to regain some level of feeling “normal” in between surgeries.  Right now I’m not sure I will manage to feel 100% ever again but most difficult of all has been that suffering from a rare cancer like mine means there is no “What to Expect When you’re Expecting”-type guidelines to go by for treatment, progression, likelihood of recurrence or anything else.  My best hope now is that all the tissue I’ve donated for rare cancer research is paired up with proper funding to allow our best and brightest to develop NEW treatment options for people like me.  I’ve given bits of lung, bits of stomach, small intestine, colon, many a lymph node, two ribs, an adrenal gland, my only spleen and my favorite kidney and that’s about all I have to donate.  My poor family has been through the ringer multiple times and we live quarterly scan to quarterly scan just waiting for the other shoe to drop on a new tumor appearing requiring another surgery.  Next one of those may be my last.

Despite all that, I have an amazing life and the skilled care I’ve received has allowed me to keep ticking along at full blast for a decade, adventuring with my family and friends and learning to live each day, month and year like it may be my last.  Wearing pants is a day to day decision and I do NOT pass up ice cream for any reason at this point.  I’ve seen my child get into and through Middle School and now onto High School and hopefully with a new treatment option for my rare cancer I can see him graduate, and move out of the house, and maybe learn to do laundry.  Miracles CAN happen!