Fran Stanhope, left, stands Sept. 13 with her husband, Bob, at the Dempsey Center in Lewiston. Fran Stanhope was selected this year to be the Amanda Dempsey Award recipient, according to Katelynn Davis, Dempsey Center marketing and communications director .
Russ Dillingham/Sun Journal LEWISTON — Fran Stanhope considers herself a vessel to help people funnel donations to the Dempsey Challenge for the Dempsey Center every year. “Every year that I’ve fundraised, I’ve raised more than the year before and it blows my mind every time because I just can’t fathom that people, kind of, just keep giving me money — giving Dempsey money through me,” she said. She now uses her voice to help others through a difficult time she is all too familiar with herself.
After being diagnosed with stage four bladder cancer in 2016 that ended up recurring a couple of years later, she understands the value of the services the Dempsey Center provides. Her work to help raise money for the Dempsey Challenge for the last roughly seven years and advocacy for the center has set her apart from others and it is part of the reason why she was selected this year to be the Amanda Dempsey Award recipient, according to Katelynn Davis, Dempsey Center marketing and communications director. “It’s not just the fundraising, she truly, truly cares and speaks from the heart about the center,” she said.
“She’s a huge advocate ...
for the center in getting people to come here and access our services when they’re going through the cancer journey.” Fundraising efforts like Stanhope’s allows the center to keep serving thousands of people every year at no cost to them, Davis said. Stanhope started fundraising solo in 2018 and then came back with a team the following year and has since been a big fundraiser for the event, earning the spot as the top single fundraiser for the event in years 2021 , 2022 and this year, Stanhope said.
So far this year she has raised more than $50,000 herself, and her team, Fran’s Army, has raised more than $78,000 this year. Dempsey Center wellness services include message, reiki, acupuncture, oncology counseling, support groups, physical fitness classes specifically designed for oncology patients, nutrition classes, along with others. Those services are rarely covered by insurance, so often people go without them or pay for them out of pocket.
But the Dempsey Center offers them at no cost to patients. Though Stanhope had good health insurance through her cancer journey, which not everyone with cancer has, cancer is still a financial and mental burden, she said. “I think a lot of people think they know what Dempsey Center is but I think a lot of people don’t really know what the Dempsey Center is, what they do and how much help that they give to people,” she said.
When Stanhope’s doctor handed down her cancer diagnosis, she was unsure that she would ever reach remission but her doctor encouraged her to fight and had faith that she would pull through, she said. “I thought that was it, you know, stage four,” she said. “But my doctor said he thought I was curable.
” Fran Stanhope stands Sept. 13 in the entrance of the Dempsey Center in Lewiston. Stanhope was selected this year to be the Amanda Dempsey Award recipient, according to Katelynn Davis, Dempsey Center marketing and communications director .
Russ Dillingham/Sun Journal That’s what she did. Starting with the first of what would be six rounds of chemotherapy about a month after her diagnosis, giving her 18 days off between the three-day treatment rounds, she said. After three rounds of chemotherapy she was in remission but she finished the rest of her treatments.
“You see, when you are stage four they do chemo first, then surgery because you don’t have six weeks to spare,” Stanhope wrote on her Dempsey Challenge fundraising webpage. Then came surgery at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, she said. Doctors removed her bladder, pelvic lymph nodes and gave her a hysterectomy.
Using part of her intestine, doctors built her a new internal bladder, called a neobladder. After surgery she spent six days in the hospital fighting an infection she thought might kill her — it did not. Fitness classes at the Dempsey Center helped her get back on her feet, she said.
In late 2018, a CT scan showed the cancer had traveled to her lymph nodes in her neck, she said. However, this time around would prove more challenging as she developed an allergy to chemotherapy, resulting in slowing down the rate at which the chemo treatment was administered. She also had radiation treatment this time around, resulting in burns a week after her last radiation treatment, she said.
She pulled through and again went into remission in 2019 and has been in remission since. Stanhope’s husband, Bob Stanhope, watched his wife of 42 years fight her way through cancer twice, referring to her as a trooper, he said. “It’s been a tough journey then to watch her again be sick and I don’t wish that on anyone,” he said.
Again, Stanhope leaned on the Dempsey Center to help get her back on her feet, she said. She also took yoga classes and had messages provided by the Center to help her recover from the treatments. She also accessed support groups.
From the first time she visited the Center, she was moved by everything they offered. At least $20,000 of the funds Stanhope raises comes from a Mallett Brothers Band concert she organizes each year at the Maine Cabin Masters Woodshed, she said. The local band plays the concert free to help raise money for the Dempsey Challenge and Maine Cabin Masters gives her the venue for free but makes money off of food and drinks sold at the event.
Fran’s Army Fundraiser concert started three years ago and has only grown in popularity, she said. This year the 300 tickets available sold out a month before the concert. It takes a great amount of energy from her to keep the event going each year but seeing all of the people, some familiar and some not, at the event creating a loving atmosphere makes it worthwhile, she said.
“They come from all over New England and we have such a camaraderie.” Davis has watched the concert event grow and take off each year, she said. Though Dempsey Center staff will attend the concert, the planning, preparation and fundraising are all efforts by Stanhope, her husband, The Mallet Brothers Band and Fran’s Army.
“It’s just been really beautiful to see it grow into such a big, amazing event that people look forward to every year,” she said. Through her cancer fundraising, she has come to form several different families, she said. She has a family of people she developed through The Mallett Brothers Band concert, she has developed a family at the Dempsey Center and she has developed a family through Fran’s Army, which includes everyone who supported her throughout her fundraising journey.
Cancer has changed Stanhope in many different ways, good and bad, from the physical changes and anxiety about recurrence, to finding her voice in advocacy and fundraising for others — she is changed for the rest of her life. “If I hadn’t had cancer, I wouldn’t have the passion or understanding to carry that through,” she said. Stanhope is driven by a desire to help bring to people services that she sees as being essential to recovering from cancer and making people feel comfortable again, she said.
“That’s why raising the money means so much to me because I don’t want anybody to have to figure (paying for services) out,” she said. “I think the services they provide at Dempsey are crucial to total healing. I think a lot of people wouldn’t take advantage of those if they weren’t’ at no cost.
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