Porsche car raffle helped winners look forward

When Mark Bassett first got an email about entering the Colorectal Cancer Alliance’s Blue Hope Bash car raffle, he immediately forwarded it to his wife, Diana, and said, “We should buy tickets.” Mark, 64, has always loved cars—especially Porsches—and hey, what if they won?

But as a colorectal cancer patient deep in the throes of chemo fog, Mark forgot to buy the tickets. “So I jumped on it,” Diana said.

In January 2022, Mark was diagnosed with stage II colorectal cancer. It shifted Mark and Diana’s world. 

Removing Mark’s tumor would take a total pelvic exenteration, a radical procedure, and Mark and Diana were having trouble finding an experienced surgeon who was available to perform the surgery. This is where the Colorectal Cancer Alliance helped. With the assistance of Alliance staff, they identified surgeons capable of doing the surgery, including Jonathan Efron, MD.

Dr. Efron completed the surgery in November 2022, certainly extending Mark’s life, Diana said. The surgery was successful, but the surgical team observed a small suspicious nodule on Mark’s liver during the procedure. Ultimately after additional testing, it was confirmed that Mark was a stage IV (metastatic) patient.

After recovery from surgery, Dr. Efron referred Mark to oncologist Valerie Lee, MD, who recommended chemo to address make both the pelvic area and the lesion in Mark’s liver. 

It was during these chemo treatments that Mark saw the Blue Hope Bash car raffle, and Diana bought not one but three tickets. 

“While I was at it, I thought it was for a good cause, so I bought three tickets,” Diana said. “The third ticket had a string of my lucky numbers: 0-7-4-1. I thought it was funny that the third ticket had those numbers, but I thought, ‘Maybe I’ll give Mark a Porsche for Christmas.’ And then I forgot about it.”

Last December, Diana’s phone rang at 9:30 p.m. with a number she didn’t recognize. Having just come home from the hospital and feeling tired and burned out, she didn’t answer, even though her phone rang several times. Next came a text that urged her to answer the phone.

“So I called back,” Diana said, “and the person on the phone said, ‘Congratulations! You won the Porsche!’” 

It was Avi Benaim, an Alliance Board of Directors member, calling from the Blue Hope Bash in Washington, DC. 

“I yelled, ‘Mark, we won the Porsche!’’ Diana said. 

He gasped, admitting that he forgot to buy the tickets. 

Diana smiled and said, “But I didn’t!”

Mark and Diana decided to do a road trip to pick up the Porsche at a dealership near Philadelphia. The dealership was on the same street where they bought their first car together, close by to where they got married 32 years ago.

An attentive caregiver, Diana rented an SUV and created a bed for Mark in the backseat. On the day they were set to leave, Mark didn’t feel up to the journey but changed his mind at the last minute. Mark was able to drive his Porsche part of the way home before handing the reigns to Diana. 

“Neither of us thought we would drive a Porsche, let alone own one,” Diana said. “It was a car that he loved that we never would have bought for ourselves.”

“When you or a loved one is diagnosed with an illness, you tend to focus on everything you missed out on or that you can’t do anymore,” Diana said. “We used to love to ski, go to the beach, and eat dinner together. We lost all these things that were important to us, but it never occurred to us that we could have a new experience, which is what winning the car gave us.”

She continued, “It taught us that even though Mark was sick, there were new things we could do in different ways. That’s what was so magical about it. It shifted the focus from what we lost to what we could gain.”

Mark and Diana have a home in St. Mary’s City, Maryland, with rural roads that are “fun to drive on,” especially early in the morning.

“Mark had spent tremendous amounts of time in bed, but when the car arrived, he wanted to get up early and get on the road to drive before people were on it,” Diana said. “It was great to have something for him to look forward to. He does like to go fast. I am not as adventurous, so I would just close my eyes.” 

Being able to connect with people who understand the unique challenges of this disease has been the biggest benefit of connecting with the Alliance, Diana said. 

“The navigators are so helpful when it comes to figuring out treatments, hospice and doing research. They always come back with ideas,” Diana said. “Sometimes on this journey, you feel like you’re crazy trying to figure out the connections between the health system and insurance, and so talking to a navigator validates you and gives you the confidence to persevere.”

Diana and Mark bought their Blue Hope Bash car raffle tickets on a whim, but it paid off in a big way. 

“If someone reads this story, what I want them to take away is to think creatively about new experiences,” Diana said. “You’re clinging to getting back to normal, but there’s joy in the unfamiliar too. That was the magic of the Blue Hope Bash for us.”

Editor’s note: Mark underwent a Y90 treatment on Aug. 26 in an attempt to treat his liver tumor. To do the treatment, he had to go off chemotherapy during which his disease in the pelvis progressed, and as a result, he began hospice. Mark succumbed to his disease on October 9, 2024.