Family Runs in Colorado Half Marathon In Memory of a Friend to Benefit Her “Angels in the Chemo Center”

Chris, Meagan and Carolyn Gdowski and 45 members of Team Tanner are are running the Colorado 1/2 Marathon in Fort Collins on May 4 in memory and honor Carolyn's college friend Sherra Tanner who bravely fought colon cancer that took her life at age 44.

The family is running to raise money to fulfill her wishes to provide a college education for her two boys, Ryan (15) and Alex (11) and also raise money to further educate oncology nurses who she referred to as "Angels in the Chemo Center". Sherra's husband Chris's wish is to provide for their boys as well as give back to their "Angels".

Chris wrote this about the "Angels in the Chemo Center".

We spend so much time at the chemo center that our nurses begin to feel like family. We learn about their families, and they learn about ours. The nurses quickly learn the little things about Sherra’s care that make our time there somewhat doable. Like spraying Sherra’s port area with numbing spray to ease the pain of the giant chemo needle she must get stabbed with at every treatment. They allow us to stay in a private room when Sherra’s tears can’t be held back in front of the other chemo patients. They take our phone calls at 5 pm on a Saturday, when we need to up the dose of Sherra’s anti-nausea medicine to keep her from throwing up. They cheered with us when we got a good PET scan result, and cried with us when the PET scan result went bad. In short, the “angels” in the Chemo center made our awful journey bearable, and provided us with amazing care.

HOW TO HELP

To donate please go to:  joytotheworldfoundation.org and search for Sherra Tanner.   Each donation is tax deductible.  The family goal is to raise $10,000.   The Team Tanner goal is to raise $30,000 dollars or more.