****Please help Dave and Joy manage the travel costs of brain cancer treatments several hours drive from their home.****

Some of you might know Dave as the rock of the Cormier family. He was the primary caregiver for over a decade of his mom’s complicated illness, including a final 18 months of getting up at 4am to help her manage a feeding tube, complex medications, and toileting—filling in for skilled nursing care and driving her to distant appointments all while holding down his own job.

His mom died in August 2024. This past April, just as spring was finally arriving in the UP, Dave noticed he was having some trouble playing guitar and navigating the familiar drive to work.

Three months in, after two surgeries to shrink a fast-growing tumor and take biopsies, the best doctors in Duluth and Minneapolis are still evaluating whether the growth in his brain is a glioblastoma or a lymphoma of the central nervous system (CNS lymphoma).

Either way, it’s very, very tough news. And scary.

Dave is currently in hospital in Duluth, in the same place where he spent so much time advocating for his mom through multiple weeks on and off a ventilator just last year.

Even as doctors still work to make the definitive diagnosis, he has started urgent radiation and chemotherapy, which is likely to take at least two months. He is also starting intensive rehab to tackle damage to his movements and memory.

Travel and hotel stays are a big extra source of stress at this time, as is time off work for his wife Joy and daughters Hannah and Sage.

Duluth is 3 hours drive from Dave’s home, and Minneapolis specialists are around 5.5 hours away. Those are huge journeys for a person dealing with unpredictable and extreme pain.

As the hospital discharges him to 4-5 days a week of outpatient radiation & chemo, we hope to be able to have him stay nearby in a Duluth hotel with Joy or a family member for the length of his treatment.

We’re starting this GoFundMe for friends, family, and well-wishers who want to help a very deserving husband, father, and son find some practical relief in a tough time.