Support Coach Red Sanders' Fight Against Stage 4 Cancer

Message from Coach Red's wife, Michela

Unfortunately, I have some incredibly difficult news to share…

Shortly after moving to North Carolina at the end of January, Brandon “Red” Sanders began experiencing illness with symptoms including nausea, pain, and fatigue. After an 8 day trip to the ER, and extensive testing, we learned that Brandon has colon cancer that has metastasized, or spread, to his liver, making it a Stage 4 diagnosis. This news has blindsided our family. This diagnosis is especially crushing since it comes less than 1 year after the death of my younger sister from cancer. Stage 4 CRC is considered incurable, but there are more treatment options available than in the past, which gives us hope. We have been impressed with our doctors at Duke Cancer Institute so far. The immediate course of action is aggressive chemotherapy (which we’ve already started) to shrink both liver and colon tumors and prevent further spread. If the liver tumors can shrink enough to be surgically removed, it gives Brandon the best prognosis moving forward. I’ve been reading inspirational stories of people with stage 4 CRC living 3,5,10+ years past diagnosis. We plan to do whatever we need to do to be one of those stories.

At the end of January, we moved from Texas to North Carolina and looked forward to this new chapter of being closer to family and friends after years of bouncing around with Brandon’s coaching career. Brandon had several job offers lined up and had planned to accept one of those offers literally the day he was hospitalized. After a couple years of set backs both personally and professionally, it’s really defeating to be handed another blow. We have a beautiful 5 year old boy and 3 year old girl and we try to put on a brave face for them everyday.

I know we have friends and family across the country that will ask to help. We have a Go Fund Me set up so those that wish to offer support, can do so that way. We face a lot of uncertainty and anything raised will go towards the immediate and unplanned expenses we now face: loss of income, insurance, childcare, medical bills, and travel to treatments. My hope is to alleviate some of these stressors while we adjust to a new “normal”, focus on healing, and try to figure out what life looks like moving forward. Prayers and messages of encouragement are also as good as gold.

Lastly, March is colon cancer awareness month, so I’d be remiss if I didn’t tell you to seek medical attention if you are experiencing any symptom other than what is normal for you. There’s an uptick of people in their 20,30,40s getting this type of cancer, and others. There’s no longer such thing as too young, or too healthy. I will try to keep everyone posted on updates as we move through this process.

Thank you for your love and support,

Michela