In the late 1990s, as he was entering his 50s, Atlanta financial manager Jeff Wigbels was a hard-driving marathon runner and triathlete with the health and physique of a man at least a decade younger.
“He ran circles around me,” said Tiffany Wigbels, his wife of 10 years. “Always on the go! His motto: ‘I’ll sleep when I’m dead.’ ”
But then he started getting a chronic cough. “I thought it was bronchitis,” Wigbels said. “I thought I was just getting old.”
Doctors couldn’t figure out what it was until 2006, when he received the devastating diagnosis: stage 4 lung cancer with a baseball-sized tumor in his left lung. His five-year life expectancy? Less than 10 percent.
Wigbels was suitably shocked. He never smoked. To make matters worse, Tiffany was about to give birth to their second child, Jack. He wondered if he’d be able to see his two kids grow up.
But he wasn’t the wallowing type.
“He gathered the troops,” Tiffany Wigbels said. “He placed people on committees. We had research to do, things to cover, appointments to be with him. That’s his default mode: take charge and make it happen.”
Wigbels became a lung cancer expert, learning he had an unusual nonsmoker’s cancer. He tried different experimental treatments at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, where doctors used a relatively new cancer therapy that targeted drugs to the molecular aspects of the tumor. But over three years, he couldn’t beat it. The tumor would become resistant to specific treatments over time and resume attack.
By October 2009, the tumor had gotten so big that it blocked Wigbels’ esophagus, and he couldn’t eat or drink. Fortunately, his doctor had a pill that he thought could shrink the tumor.
It worked. Within two weeks, Wigbels was eating pizza.
During that time, he started Take Aim at Cancer, a nonprofit organization to raise money for research, treatment and patient care at MD Anderson. He has raised about $1 million so far.
Now 63, he said his cancer has been in effective remission for 18 months, but he has to maintain treatment with pills.
“He still has cancer in his lung and his brain,” said Dr. Roy Herbst, who Wigbels calls “my quarterback” for treating him for several years at MD Anderson. Herbst now works at Yale University. “These pills are his lifeline. Someday, these pills may not work.”
As a result, Tiffany said they truly live in the moment: “We’re not superheroes in that respect. We’re a normal couple. We argue. We make up. We just have a different perspective on things. We have a depth of connectiveness that is just amazing through this experience.”
Wigbels still works full time at Morgan Stanley but sets aside time every day to build his charity.
“It’s returning something back to society,” Wigbels said. “It’s doing something right. I have no excuses. I have to fight this. I will wake up in the middle of the night and go to the restroom and think about it. It never goes away.”
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