Fundraiser launched for longtime volunteer battling cancer

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This article was published 26/05/2022 (1378 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Friends of a longtime community volunteer are raising funds to help him and his family as he battles Stage 4 cancer.

Peter Nissen, who volunteered for decades at the East End Community Centre, was diagnosed with cancer earlier this year, one that doctors wanted to shrink with chemotherapy and radiation before they could surgically remove it.

Earlier this week, Nissen was hospitalized for a suspected blood clot. While there, doctors discovered he had solid organ cancer in his colon that has spread to other organs.

Unable to work or take care of his wife Dana — who suffered a stroke while travelling in Alberta in 2016 — Nissen’s friend Tyson Tame has set up a GoFundMe campaign to provide the family with financial assistance.

As of Thursday, 46 donors had given $4,780 in the five days since the campaign was launched. That’s approximately one-third of the total goal of $15,000.

In an update posted to the campaign’s website Wednesday night, Tame wrote that Nissen has a positive attitude and doesn’t want anyone to feel sadness, tears or anything else negative about his situation as he prepares for radiation and chemotherapy treatments next week.

“It’s only about three weeks old,” Tame told the Sun about the situation earlier this week. “It happened very, very fast. It went from them thinking he had a tumour to he has Stage 4 terminal [cancer]. It’s really troublesome as far as Dana goes … Even laying in the hospital with what he’s been told, he’s only concerned about Dana. The fundraiser is for Peter, but it’s for Dana in the long run.”

Any funds collected will only be accessible by Nissen, his wife and their daughter, Kayla Drakeley, Tame said.

Tame has known Nissen for so long that both he and his daughter benefited from his volunteerism when they were young. For Tame, he first encountered Nissen as a bus driver for Sunday school at Calvary Temple and for his daughter, Nissen helped her lace up her skates at the East End Community Centre.

Another friend, Quentin Derhak, said he hopes Nissen’s treatment will stabilize his condition enough for him to enjoy the summer. He’s also hopeful that the people Nissen has touched through his work as a contractor and his volunteering will take the time to express their appreciation before its too late.

Derhak first met Nissen when his family moved from Dauphin to Brandon when he was 12 years old, going to Sunday breakfasts at the Golden Perogy restaurant.

Despite switching careers from barbering to real estate agency, Derhak still operates a private studio at his home where he learned about Nissen’s situation when he and Tame visited recently.

While he knew both men previously, he didn’t know that Nissen and Tame were also friends. This, he said, helps illustrate Nissen’s reach in the community.

“He’s kind of like that uncle you only run into three times a year but is super happy to see you,” Derhak said. “The guy kept up with me more than I kept up with him. He knew what I was up to my entire life growing up. He’d ask me ‘hey, how are the kids?’ and stuff like that. How do you know this? He truly cares about the people that he knows, even if he only sees them once in a while.”

Beyond the GoFundMe campaign, Tame is also organizing an art auction to help raise money for his friend. Initially, he had talked about auctioning off some of his pieces by local artist Weiming Zhao, and now other local artists have approached him about donating works for the effort.

Details are still to come on the specifics of the auction, but donated works will be collected between June 13 and 18.

The fundraiser can be found at bit.ly/3wQ3Zom.

» cslark@brandonsun.com

» Twitter: @ColinSlark