Plaque unveiled for man behind Help Save Matthew
Since his death from rare blood cancer, website has raised funds to be donated
A plaque was unveiled on Sunday for Matthew Schreindorfer, the man behind HelpSaveMatthew. com who died of a rare type of cancer in February.
“Never quit fighting, loving and inspiring,” read the plaque, in a memory garden behind a funeral complex where a service was held for him in Laval.
Hundreds of people, led by members of Schreindorfer’s family, held candles and filed past the plaque in the extreme cold just before dusk.
Before his death on Feb. 25 at age 27, Schreindorfer raised hundreds of thousands of dollars twice for experimental cancer treatments in the United States using a crowdfunding campaign.
Schreindorfer’s wife, Katia Luciani, and other family members invited the public to the outdoor candlelit ceremony on the Facebook page that had been created for the Help Save Matthew campaign.
Schreindorfer’s family is asking the public to make blood donations, donate platelets, which are blood cells that help form clots to stop bleeding, or register with the Stem Cell Donor Registry.
Schreindorfer’s success in raising awareness through social media about his treatment not being offered in Canada led to the launch of an immunotherapy centre at Maisonneuve-Rosemont Hospital in July 2016, his family said.
Shortly after returning from his honeymoon in 2014, Schreindorfer was treated for what doctors initially thought was a virus he had contracted overseas and then thought was mononucleosis. With further tests, he was given a diagnosis of acute lymphoblastic leukemia, an aggressive blood cancer.
The cancer progressed despite chemotherapy and immunotherapy treatments and a clinical trial in Quebec.
Schreindorfer and his family then launched a public fundraising campaign and raised more than $800,000 in donations from strangers to fund an experimental treatment in New York. It was successful. However, after nearly a year of remission, the cancer returned in December 2015.
Schreindorfer and Luciani were halfway through raising funds for a second round of experimental treatment in Seattle when his condition worsened.
Writing on the Facebook page after Schreindorfer’s death, Luciani said all of the money that was raised for the second treatment would be given to organizations raising money for research and for patient care.