Hunter Redden

Hi, my name is Hunter Redden and this is my second year participating in the October Saves Goalie Challenge. I will be making saves for a new team this season, the 95 Giants 2014 East Select team, and have set the bar higher this year for my own personal development as well as for my fundraising efforts. Last year I was able to raise over $2,800 for this incredible initiative, and I don’t want to stop there. This season I have set my personal goal at $4,000 for this incredibly important fundraising opportunity that has even more meaning for me this year.

Last year I chose to become part of the October Saves family to raise important cancer research funding to help make a difference in honor of my close friend and former fellow Jr. Crusader teammate who lost his 13-month battle with a DMG brain tumor last October. I saw the family navigate treatments and clinical trials to extend his life for as long as possible before he gained his wings. My mother was also diagnosed with breast cancer last spring and when I found out about the October Saves initiative, it was therefore a no-brainer for me to participate. This gave me the opportunity to make every save count. Each and every save I made last season helped raise important funding to continue ever important research for new treatments for this terrible disease.

As many of my closest friends and family know, cancer hit my family incredibly hard over the past year. My mother and my stepmother, the two most important women in my life, were both diagnosed with cancer. This year I am dedicating my fundraising efforts to my mom who was diagnosed with breast cancer last spring and to my stepmom and hockey mom who was diagnosed with advanced stage terminal pancreatic cancer last November.  My mom is currently stable and thankfully doing well after months of intensive chemotherapy, radiation, and surgery last year, but she still needs close monitoring to make sure her cancer doesn’t return. My stepmom’s diagnosis has been hard for me to process because pancreatic cancer has an incredibly low survival rate. Over the past year I have seen her go through aggressive chemotherapy and radiation treatments, but unfortunately her tumor didn’t respond to treatments like we hoped it would. Her tumor is intertwined around multiple blood vessels that make it impossible to be surgically removed. My stepmom has since transitioned to oral maintenance chemotherapy treatments and will continue to be monitored every 2-3 months indefinitely. It has been almost 10 months since her diagnosis which is double the expected post-diagnosis lifespan of pancreatic cancer. Both my mom and stepmom have undergone treatments through Dana-Farber and October Saves is a big financial supporter of Dana-Farber through the goalie challenge initiative.

The funding that is raised through the October Saves is so important for people like my mom and stepmom in order to develop early detection methods, to make advancements to cancer treatments, and to extend life beyond diagnosis for as long as possible. As an 11-year-old boy who loves both my mom and stepmom fiercely, I want both of them in my life for as long as possible. Thank you for taking the time to read my story and have a better understanding as to why the October Saves initiative is so important to me. If you can find it in your heart or within your means to donate to my page, it would mean a lot to me.  No matter how big or how small your donation, every dollar for cancer research counts!