The Matt Wingerd Cancer Awareness Fund

The Cancer Awareness Fund was created by Matt Wingerd in early 2026. This fund can only exist with the help of you and other generous individuals.

The way the fund works is through donations provided to the fund. As I attend my chemotherapy appointments, every two weeks, I will surprise one of my fellow cancer patients. Chemotherapy is one of the most expensive drugs you can take at the hospital. Many individuals do not have superb insurance and struggle to keep up with their bills.

Therefore, depending on the donations received during the two weeks, I will surprise one individual with cash. This could be $100, $1,000, or whatever. This will really come down to the donors and how much I am able to provide.

I can not wait to see the looks on their faces as they receive this generous gift that they were not anticipating at all that day. In addition, every encounter will be recorded and posted on this page for all donors to see. I’m hoping you are as excited about seeing the looks on their faces as I am.

Donations Received for Next GiveAway! Goal: $1,000

Here is How to Donate to the Cancer Awareness Fund:

@Cancer_Awareness_Fund Last 4 of Phone: 0396

m.wingerd@comcast.net

ZELLE: Matt Wingerd

• • Colorectal Cancer Alliance: This is the leading non-profit dedicated specifically to colorectal cancer. Donations support critical awareness and prevention programs, patient and caregiver support, and cutting-edge research through initiatives like Project Cure CRC.

• • American Cancer Society: A well-known organization that fights all types of cancer. Contributions fund a wide range of research, patient support (such as lodging during treatment at Hope Lodges), and advocacy efforts.

• • Colon Cancer Coalition: This organization focuses on raising awareness and increasing screening rates. A unique aspect is that money raised at local events is often given back to that same community to support local patients and education initiatives.

• • Fight Colorectal Cancer (Fight CRC): This organization focuses on empowering patients, advocating for policy changes to increase access to care, and funding research to advance treatments.

• • CancerCare: This charity provides financial assistance for treatment-related costs, as well as support groups and counseling for patients and caregivers affected by various types of cancer, including colorectal cancer. 

• • Cancer Awareness Fund: This fund is a lot of fun and needs your participation to be successful.  This is a fund developed by me, as a way to support to my fellow cancer patients.

I started up chemotherapy in October, 2022, immediately after finding out the cancer had metastasized to the liver. I started my chemo journey at Tennessee Oncology which was very convenient as it is only 20 minute drive from my home.

I got started on a regimen named Folfox, a common, highly effective combination chemotherapy regimen used primarily to treat colorectal cancer, consisting of leucovorin calcium (folinic acid), fluorouracil (5-FU), and oxaliplatin. The game plan was to be on this every two weeks for 12 weeks.

The 5-FU is a standard chemo used for colon cancer, the oxiliplatin can be interchanged in some patients with Irinotecan. In which case it is otherwise known as Folfiri. The oxiliplatin can be rather rough. The doctors warned when I leave the building I may feel colder than normal. Also, I may feel a sting when grabbing cold items such as food out of the refrigerator or freezer. Boy, they weren’t kidding. Trying to grab ice cream, or frozen meat to cook was a challenge as it sent a shock through my hands. Wicked stuff.

Anyway, the overall goal for this 12 week period is obviously to kill off the cancer or, at least, have the lesions decrease in size. (Lesions and cancer may be used interchangeably in this post.)

After the 12th round of chemo at TN Oncology, my lesions still appeared. This prompted my oncologist to suggest I transfer my care to Vanderbilt University as they offer a more aggressive chemo procedure named “Hepatic Arterial Infusion“. This procedure begins with the surgical implantation of a pump under the skin. The pump acts as a reservoir for chemotherapy medicine. It delivers high doses of chemotherapy directly to the liver through the liver’s main artery, called the hepatic artery.

I had this pump placed in me on August 23, 2023, almost a year after my original diagnosis. The pump would be filled every 2 weeks along side a regimen of Folfiri as well. So basically, we are attacking the lesions in multiple ways. I was on this HAI procedure for upwards of a year and , in the end, it really didn’t accomplish for me what was hoped. The lesions still remained but were remaining stable or a slight decrease in size.

Exactly a year later, on August 23, 2024, my surgical oncologist decided to get aggressive and had me come in for an operation on my liver. He performed a resection of the right lobe and ablation on the left lobe. Resection is removing the liver, ablation is burning away the lesions. The liver is actually the only organ in the body to regenerate itself. This is why it is ok to resect at least half the liver and why transplants work so well.

Effectively, after this surgery, I had no lesions remaining in my liver, yay! But was I free of cancer???

Once you become Stage IV, there is no such thing as “healed”, or “cancer free”. What we call it is “NED”, no evidence of disease. The problem is, once you are this far along, the cancer can re-emerge or pop up anywhere at any time.

Every now an then after the operation, I would take new MRI’s and CT scans to determine if the cancer is still gone or came back. unfortunately, a scan finally came back that revealed the cancer had now spread to the lung. More bad news. It was still gone from the liver, but meant time to go back on chemo.

I spent the next 6 months, through March of 2025, on a every other two week chemo regimen. Fortunately, the lesions in the lungs don’t grow significantly fast. All the lesions either remained stable or decreased in size. So in April, the onologist decided it was time to take a break from chemo as too much of it for too long could kill me also.

During that same time, we decided to have my HAI pump surgically removed as it was no longer being used and didn’t really help to begin with. So I was looking forward to getting back into exercising, running, biking, weightlifting, etc.

Then BAM! One more setback. My bilirubin sky-rocketed, from a normal range of 0 – 1, all the way up to a 10 at one point. Therefore I had to have two drainage tubes surgically placed in between my rib cage and placed into my intrahepatic arterial ducts. The cause of my spike in bilirubin was strictures in my intrahepatic ducts ultimately caused by years of pounding my body with chemotherapy. To this day, Jan of 2026, I still have these drainage tubes in me. They extremely reduce my ability to do much of anything. I can make puzzles, paint, etc. but have no ability to get physical. I couldn’t even go in my freakin pool this past summer or the hot tub. So annoying.

Then in August, 2025, a new MRI/CT scan showed lesion had popped back up in the liver. So that’s when it was time to go back on chemo again. Later that month, my surgical oncologist suggested we try another procedure, relatively new since late 2023 named “Histotripsy“. This is a non-invasive, radiation-free, and incision-free FDA-approved (2023) treatment for liver tumors using focused sound waves to create “bubble clouds” that liquefy cancer cells. This precision technology targets tumors up to 5 cm while sparing healthy surrounding tissue. It is an outpatient procedure offering a 95.5% success rate in trials with minimal side effects like temporary pain or discomfort.

This procedure turned out to be a success and killed off one of the lesion. We couldn’t do this to all the cancer in the liver as they have to be at least a certian size. All my lesions are rather small, 2-6mm in size.

So this is pretty much where I stand at the current moment. I still have a handful of lesions in the liver and in the lungs. I will go for my 53rd round of chemo on January 30, 2026.

In August, 2022 I am outside doing yardwork in 90 degree heat, water bottle in hand, sweating my ass off. I was probably out there a good 2 to 3 hours before I finally gave in to the heat. During this whole time, I never kneeled over, never gasped for breath, etc. If someone had came up to me that day and told me to stop because you have Stage IV cancer, I would have laughed them off. That’s the unfortunate thing about colon cancer, it is a silent killer.

During the second week of September, 2022, I had my first colonoscopy at the age of 53. They say to get your first one by the age of 50. Moving from Florida a few years before, then having Covid hit in 2020/2021, it was very hard to schedule any sort of an appointment. Finally I was able to get in and see my primary care physician and he basically scheduled me for “the works”. I think within those first two weeks of September, I saw the urologist, cardiologist, gastroenterologist, all the “ologists” there are.

At the appointment, the doctor came in and showed my wife and I the results; a golf ball sized mass in my colon. Of course hearts sunk, not quite the news you want or even expect to hear. This mass was immediately sent out to pathology for further analysis.

The wait to hear back the results was excrutiating. I think it was a full 4/5 days before I was finally told about the bad news. On September 16, 2022, the doctor called and said he was sorry to inform me that it is cancer. My wife was working from home that day, in the office, and I paced and paced and paced some more trying to figure out how I was going to break the news to her.

Meanwhile, my son had just gotten off the bus and came in the room asking what am I doing and why am I so upset. It took a while to gather myself to finally tell someone. I told him my results came back and I have cancer. He was in shock, couldn’t believe it and ran to the office to let his mom know. So I went in at the same time and finally let her know. It felt like time stopped, everyone was in disbelief and shock. Oh, by the way, it just happened to be my son’s 12th birthday that day. Not really the gift I was hoping to give him.

After tears were shed among all, my son finally says, “Does this mean we are not going to have my bday, dad?”. Those words were kinda what I needed to get a smile on my face. I said, “of course son, we are still having your bday”. I don’t know, i just thought his comment was kind of funny and was a good icebreaker for how we were all feeling.

NEXT STEPS:
Within the first week of being diagnosed, I was lucky enough to get an appointment to surgically remove the tumor as well as 3 inches of colon on either side, just to be safe. The tumor was then sent on to pathology for further analysis. The results came back probably within two days and showed the majority of my lymph nodes had been affected. This is not good as it is a sign that the cancer probably has moved on to other organs. The next, most likely organ being the liver.

The next week I was sent for imaging for an MRI and CT scans of my lower abdomen. The results of these came back rather quickly and did show 4 to 5 small lesions in the liver. Not good news. Stage IV.

On to Chemotherapy.