giving back
Living Out the Bucket List A LOCAL FOUNDATION HELPS MAKE WISHES COME TRUE FOR ADULTS WITH CANCER. BY CORBIE HILL | PHOTOS COURTESY OF FILL YOUR BUCKET LIST FOUNDATION
BETWEEN THANKSGIVING AND THE New Year, Peggy Carroll’s nonprofit granted seven wishes to adults coping with cancer. The wishes ranged from crosscountry travel (a son was flown home for the holidays) to a local trip (one woman simply wanted to see Christmas lights). From big to small dreams, the Fill Your Bucket List Foundation obliged, making the holidays just a little bit happier for seven patients and their families. But that was only a portion of the 2017 giving for this Cary-based nonprofit. In just a few years, Fill Your Bucket List Foundation has risen to many challenges for granting the bucket list wishes of financially disadvantaged cancer patients, mostly within North Carolina. “We just celebrated our third anniversary,” Carroll says. “The first year we did two wishes, and by the end of ‘17, we [granted] 60 wishes. We have been busy.”
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Carroll knows firsthand how important it is for cancer patients to live their dreams. A little over nine years ago, it was her own father’s terminal cancer diagnosis that started this entire mission. He had late-stage lung cancer and Carroll, who has worked in cancer patient advocacy for 35 years, knew there wasn’t much time. So she asked, “What do you want to do? What is your bucket list?” Her dad’s wishes revolved around his grandchildren, Carroll’s children, who were in high school at the time. He wanted to see them play in the school band competitions, and he got his wish. He succumbed the next day, his bucket list complete. Carroll knew then that she wanted to do the same thing for other cancer patients, especially those who didn’t have the means to live their dreams. A few years later, she was able to launch Fill Your Bucket List Foundation.
“Our mission is to grant wishes to North Carolina patients who have cancer, also are struggling financially, and are over 19 years old—because Make a Wish does such a great job under 19,” Carroll says. “We help people who couldn’t afford to do what they wanted to do … maybe have a little bit of time and wonderful memories where they’re not thinking about cancer for a little bit.” It works like this: There’s a form on the Fill Your Bucket List Foundation’s website where anyone can nominate a person. The Foundation’s two criteria are that the person needs to be below the poverty line and their doctor has to give permission for them to participate (especially if the wish involves travel). Cancer puts everyone in a financial strain, Carroll knows, but she feels people who have the means are more likely to be able to pursue bucket list items than patients who were impoverished even before their diagnosis.