LEESBURG - Until Saturday night at the 2007 Cancer Care Gala at Tippecanoe Lake Country Club, Biomet President and Chief Executive Officer Jeff Binder had never spoken about his cancer experience at a public event.In 1975 at the age of 12, Binder was diagnosed with non-Hodgkins lymphoma. The morning after playing the best basketball game of his life, Binder said, he woke up with a cough. Soon after, he was diagnosed with cancer and began chemotherapy treatments.
In 1977, Binder finished the last of the chemotherapy treatments and has been cancer free ever since. However, that experience has affected and shaped the rest of Binder's life.
"It was a very intense experience, emotionally and physically," Binder said.
Binder said he learned many lessons through his cancer experience, and he highlighted four of those lessons during his speech at the fundraising event. The lessons he outlined were: When a person is diagnosed with cancer, it becomes central to their lives and the lives of their loved ones, but life does go back to normal after awhile; the importance of doctors; the importance of faith, hope, prayer, love and positive thinking; and the importance of helping others.
"When you face a life and death experience," Binder said, "everything else fades into the background. ... Eventually the intensity of experiences does begin to fade, and that is a bit of a good thing, it makes you stronger.
"As the cancer experience fades, we go back to being human."
Binder also said his cancer experience as a child made him realize the importance of doctors, and gave him the desire to help them in the future.
"It is a noble profession," Binder said.
A few years ago, Binder said he did some research about cancer survival rates, which have steadily risen through the years. When he looked up his cancer (non-Hodgkins lymphoma) and survival rate from 1975, he learned it was 50 percent.
"My life and everything that came after that was a coin flip," Binder said. He said that made him realized how much his doctors made a difference.
Along with the importance of his doctors, Binder stressed the importance of positive thinking. He believes without his family's faith, hope, prayer, love and positive thinking, he may not have had the same experience.
Binder also said that while his family was not wealthy, they were able to afford care from a private physician. However, on Thursday afternoons, Binder said, he was seen and treated in a clinic.
He saw the people who were unable to afford private care, and realized their families were just as scared as his was, but their experience was worse.
"These were not people of means," Binder said. "(The cancer) was the worst thing in my life, but as horrible as it was, these people were going through it in a way that was worse."
It was then that Binder decided that if he survived, he would try his best to do something to help those people, both children and adults.
That's why, Binder said, after hearing about the Cancer Care Fund, he decided to donated $10,000 to the cause as well as a surprise auction item for Saturday night's live auction. Binder donated two tickets to the Texas-Texas Tech college football game in Austin, Texas, in November, plus a round-trip flight from Warsaw to Austin on a private jet and hotel accommodations in Austin. The trip brought $8,000 in the live auction, making it the highest-grossing item of the night.
Other items included in the live auction were a cruise on the S.S. Lily Pad; Lasik Eye Surgery from Grossnickle Eye Center; a 2004 golf cart; a dinner for 10 at the Bertrand Farm Winery; a Sunstream boat lift; six tickets to the Chicago Bears-Green Bay Packers game Dec. 23 plus travel in a luxury RV to the game; a Big Sky Montana getaway; a Brittany Spaniel puppy; and an evening of comedy and cocktails plus a stay at the Ramada Entertainment Complex for 20 people.
Total monies raised through the silent and live auction items have not yet been released, but the Cancer Care Gala organizers hope to have another record year. In 2006, the group raised more than $160,000 for the Cancer Care Fund.
