Profile: Chris & Dellann Elliott – A love story and a loving legacy

January 3rd, 2010 | By: Fred Nystrom

This inspiring love story begins like many others–two young people meet after college and fall in love. But As Chris and Dellann discovered more about each other following their first date in 1987, they were amazed at how often their paths might have crossed in previous years: they both attended Central Washington University in Ellensburg, even living in the same dorm for a year.

Chris’s sister worked for Dellann’s doctor and Chris’s mother had built a cabin just a few miles from her family’s home in Sequim. Once fate made its final nudge, they were seldom apart.

Married in 1990, the Elliott’s became a happy family and welcomed their daughter Riley in 1993 and son Hunter in 1996. They lived in Sammamish with few visible cares in the world. Here a common love story will fade away past the white picket fence, leaving the final chapters unsaid.

But the Elliott family’s fairy tale took an alarming twist. Out of the blue on a bright Sunday in August of 2000, Chris was rocked by sudden nausea and grand mal seizures, and rushed to the hospital, unconscious. Dellann soon learned what over 200,000 other families discover each year; her husband had a primary brain tumor. Following a relatively easy surgery, the news turned grave when Chris and Dellann were told that Chris’s quarter-sized tumor was terminal—a death sentence. The tumor was a Glioblastoma and it was an aggressive type of terminal cancer with no known cure. Chris was given no more than a year to live.

For Chris and Dellann, the following year was a whirl of chemo treatments, radiation, two brain surgeries, as well as conflicting emotions and attempts to be strong for each other and for their children, parents and family. Each time they had the courage to believe that the cancer was beaten; it came screaming back with a vengeance and a new tumor. Visions of white picket fences and living happily-ever after were replaced with staying alive long enough to try a newly developed cancer treatment. While at home, Chris and Dellann worked to maintain as normal a family as possible for their children.

Because Washington had no nationally recognized brain tumor center for adults, Chris and Dellann journeyed to the Dana Farber Cancer Research Institute in Boston just two days after celebrating their 10 year wedding anniversary. The institute specializes in research and treatment of patients with Glioblastoma. Following yet another surgery and removal of a cancerous tumor, Chris began to lose balance and developed other worrisome effects from three major brain surgeries. Chris shared with Dellann that he was willing to endure as many surgeries as necessary until the “magic drug is discovered.” But in May of 2002, as Chris was about to undergo a fourth surgery, doctors discovered inoperable tumors in his brain stem.

Chris and Dellann sat up late that night sharing their love for each other and their frustration that there was not a cure for him or the 22,000 others like him who die from Glioblastoma each year. With the clarity of a man who recognized that his time on earth was very limited, Chris turned to his wife and asked her to do something seemingly impossible, knowing he wouldn’t be able to help. Chris asked Dellann to set up a research fund for Glioblastoma and do whatever she could to help find a cure and support families who were struggling with the labyrinth of the medical system. That night, the Christopher S. Elliott Memorial Glioblastoma Brain Cancer Research Fund (CEF) was created. A few short weeks later, on the sunny afternoon of June 13, 2002, Chris passed away in his Sammamish home, surrounded by his family. The last words he heard were from Dellann, Riley and Hunter telling him how much they loved him and would miss him.

Here our tale of love and tragedy transforms into the loving legacy. Supporting a loved one through illness is natural and fundamental, but how can we make reality out of a dream of what could and should be? What has happened since Chris died demonstrates the power within each person, and Dellann’s work for the past seven years is a shining example

Without knowing where to start in fulfilling her promise to Chris, Dellann simply focused on the goal to help fund brain caner research and advocate for families struggling with the related circumstances. What has been accomplished with this one woman’s pursuit of her quest is both amazing and inspiring. Dellann set out to raise funds, and the first year was able to give $5,525 to the Dana Farber lab. The second year her donation increased to $25,000, which allowed the lab to fund a research grant application just as they were losing funding from the National Institute of Health. Research accomplished with the grant they received resulted in the discovery of sub-classes of brain cancer and they developed protocols to treat each class specifically. Further research helped discover which genes cause brain cancer and which genes can be switched on or off by targeted drugs. These discoveries have been revolutionary in changing the way brain cancer is studied and treated.

To date, the Chris Elliott Fund has raised over one million dollars for brain cancer research. In recognition of this outstanding effort, the Dana Farber Lab created the Christopher S. Elliott Neuro-oncology Lab for Brain Cancer Research and Applied Cancer Science.

In May 2009, the Chris Elliott Fund announced plans to fund the first patient advocacy fellowship with the newly-named Ivy Center for Advanced Brain Tumor Treatment at the Swedish Neuroscience Institute at the Cherry Hill campus in Seattle. Only at this location will all the most recent research be used in treating brain cancer. The Chris Elliott Fund will provide a $300,000 grant earmarked to fund an in-house integrative care specialist dedicated to easing the stress upon patients and their families following a brain cancer diagnosis.

Dellann is working with the Integrative Patient Support specialist to develop the Chris Elliott Fund Integrative Patient Support Program. Dellann also creates programs for the Chris Elliott Fund brain tumor patient support groups. Dellann periodically attends these support groups to share “Chris’s Story” and help brain tumor patients understand there is now hope for a cure to this disease and to talk about the advancements available at the Ivy Center.

What Dellann’s work with the fund should show all of us is that much good can be accomplished when you come from a place of love and create your own loving story.

Perhaps Nelson Mandela understood this when he quoted Marianne Williamson: “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn’t serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you.”

Follow the example set by Chris and Dellann and take your light and your love and move ahead to do something to make this a better community, region, state, country or world.

For more information about the Chris Elliott Fund, please visit www.chriselliottfund.org. Dellann can be reached at Dellann@chriselliottfund.org.