Chapter 21. Diana Price Fish Cancer Foundation

I had an idea.

It came to me one night when I offered to take a Denver Chamber Orchestra volunteer to a concert. Her name was Catherine, and she was 30 years old and dying from brain cancer.  As we sat listening to the DCO play The Brandenburg Concertos, she turned to me, took my hand and whispered thank you.  Her evening out had given her a sense of freedom and peace she hadn’t known for some time. She died the following week.

But her gratitude sparked the idea.

A few years earlier, I had confronted darkness.  My friend, Diana, died from ovarian cancer at the age of 40.  During the same year, GB and I stopped smoking and said good-bye to our first two dogs, Cruiser R Roozer and Barney.  We lost an adorable Dutch bunny named Florence who was stolen by a hawk swooping down from the sky.  Our two original kitties, Pywackett and Mean Beanie Diamond, succumbed to old age.  I had also left my career as a lobbyist for the simple reason that I had lost my sense of humor and that is unforgiveable in politics.

When Catherine thanked me, I remembered the heartbreaking talks I had with Diana.  My dear friend had eliminated so much from her life as she struggled to survive.  And, what I found interesting was that she excluded some of her friends.  They come here with sad looks on their faces.  I don’t need that.  I’m already sad.  But, she said, I came with fun.  I stayed maybe five minutes for each visit.  We gossiped.  We laughed. Earlier in that year, she had convinced her husband to take her to Hawaii.  He did.  They both knew that the prognosis was grim.  She lived less than a year after her diagnosis.

Diana had given me a gift, one I didn’t recognize I had received until the concert with Catherine.  Don’t bring your saddest face to the bedside. Create a laugh, a smile, a reason to be grateful for the life loved, a reminder to face life, not death.  Dealing with cancer is lonely.  It’s frightening.  It’s also boring.

Boring?

Yes. Boring.  Children with cancer are treated to numerous activities.  Make a Wish.  Fire truck parades.  Pet therapy.  What did adults get? Not much.  Adult cancer patients (actually, any adult with a life-threatening disease) took their treatments then went home to take care of their families, go to work, shop for groceries, prepare for birthdays and holidays, drive the kids to where kids go, keep up the house, take care of their own parents, reassure their families that they will be okay.  They will survive. 

The idea struck me in the early morning hours after the concert.  Diana’s gift, which I had not appreciated, had been the source of Catherine’s gratitude.  I was overwhelmed with excitement.  I woke up GB and told him that I wanted to create an organization that would provide adult cancer patients with fun things to do.  I wasn’t working at the time, so I could devote my energies to the new project.

I put together a board of directors which consisted of Diana’s husband, her parents, GB and a few friends of ours.  I arranged for a tax-exempt certificate, registered as a nonprofit in Colorado, and began fleshing out how the program would operate.  We decided to recruit volunteers to accompany people on their activities. That was fine for those who were homebound.  One day, a participant said she really didn’t need a volunteer but would rather spend an evening out with her husband.  Ah ha!  Another part of the organizational puzzle was placed.  Within a year I had hired an assistant, Martha Gaskill.  Martha was a bronze medal winning paralympic skier. She was full of light and life and was exactly the perfect person to help arrange activities.  I then concentrated on raising money for our burgeoning project.  A friend suggested I contact her neighbor, Wendy Warren.  I did and Wendy, whose father had died from cancer, came on board.  She and her friends, and there were literally hundreds, put together the events that would put the Diana Price Fish Foundation over the top.  Our Late Nite parties gained a mention in Cosmopolitan.  We had restaurants and bars clamoring to be the venue for our parties. Our events moved from our garden to restaurants to country clubs and finally to hotels.  In the 1990’s we received a gift of stock from Jack Thompson, a co-founder of a tech company.  The company went public, and our stock was sold at $3.6 million.  We used that over the next decade to fund activities for over 25,000 people and their families and friends.  When they weren’t eating out, our participants went to baseball, football, Disney World, sky diving, sailing, parasailing, gliding, amusement parks, operas, concerts both rock and classical.  No one ever asked for anything like a trip to Europe.  Just the simple everyday things that helped create memories for their families.  That’s why dining out was the number one request.

In 2009 we closed the Foundation.  We had spent the funds and the only way to sustain operations was to limit activities.  Now, we decided, that clearly was not fun. We transferred the remaining funds to support a scholarship in oncology nursing at the University of Colorado and to support fun activities for critically ill patients through the Denver Foundation.

There was one activity during our early years that has never left my memory.  A participant was in home hospice care, and he desperately wanted to visit with raptors.  Arrangements were made for him to be accompanied by our volunteer, Kim Johnson.  She would transport him to the Raptor Education Center east of Denver.  But the participant became too weak to leave his bed.  He had fallen into the sleep that so often precedes death. Kim, one of the most creative and energetic people I’ve ever met, contacted the Raptor Center, and convinced them to bring an eagle to our participant’s bedside!  That evening, Raptor Center staff and Kim went into our participant’s room.  They placed a Golden Eagle on the top bar of the hospital bed.  The participant’s wife awoke him, said nothing but pointed to the eagle.  Tears flowed from his eyes as he witnessed this miracle.  He returned to his slumber, this time forever, flying to eternity on the wings of an eagle.