Help Mike Fight the Good Fight Against Cancer

I am Terry Smith, brother and bandmate of singer/guitarist Michael Smith in South Bend, Indiana. I've created this Go Fund Me campaign to help Mike deal with some of the medical bills he's incurred over the past five plus years while dealing with persistent, advanced prostate cancer.

Because of the ongoing treatments and other medical issues that have arisen from those treatments (read below), Mike has had to take an unplanned retirement from playing music. Of course, no more gigs means no more gig income. That is going to make it very difficult to keep up with medical bills, etc.

Mike has been playing guitar professionally for nearly 60 years, most recently with The Whateverly Brothers and Smith & Richards. He became interested in music when "I Want To Hold Your Hand" hit the airwaves in 1963. Like millions of other young kids in the U.S., Mike and I were glued to our televisions set on February 9, 1964 when The Beatles made their first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show. It wasn't long after that when Mike convinced our dad to buy him a Dan Electro guitar and pay for music lessons. (I still remember him playing Beautiful Dreamer for his guitar teacher, Mr. Cortier.)

Since those long ago days Mike has played somewhere in the neighborhood of 12,000 gigs and entertained many thousands of music lovers in South Bend and the U.S. In that time he's gained a reputation for being one of the area's best rhythm guitarists and lead vocalists. His rich baritone voice will be missed around these parts.

Over the past five years we've seen Mike go through many challenging stages while dealing with his prostate cancer. Unfortunately, it was not detected early so it was stage 4 when it was diagnosed in January of 2019.

Over the past five years Mike has been prescribed several drugs, including Bicalutimide, Lupron, Xtandi and others.

He has also undergone radiation therapy and chemotherapy, as well as Pluvicto, a newly introduced nuclear radiation treatment for prostate cancer that has spread to other parts of the body.

Eventually it was discovered that the cancer had spread to Mike's femur and he had surgery to insert a steel rod that reinforced the bone.

Currently Mike's PSA is very low, but he has recently been suffering a great deal of pain in his hip and back. After multiple scans and tests, doctors now believe that there is some damage to the bones in his spine that may or may not be malignant. We will know more in the next few weeks.