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Community comes together: Massive can drive for teen battling cancer

Posted at 10:03 PM, Feb 07, 2017
and last updated 2017-02-07 22:28:22-05

CEDAR SPRINGS, Mich. -- A West Michigan community is coming together to raise money for a teen battling cancer.

Brison and Preston Ricker, of Cedar Springs, were diagnosed with cancer just 11 months apart.  Brison was told that his brain cancer has a zero percent survival rate, but he and his family wouldn't accept that diagnosis.

Preston Ricker was diagnosed with lymph node cancer in December, and recently had surgery to remove it.  He's expected to be okay, so now he's helping make sure his brother is too.

An experimental treatment they found in Texas is proving everyone wrong, and Brison has already lived several months past what was predicted.

The treatment keeping him alive is costing his family $20,000 a month, and they're turning to pop cans to help pay for it.  Tens of thousands of cans flooded into the Cedar Springs Meijer store Tuesday to help support the family.

"Brison's treatment is a minimum of $20,000 a month, so we just tried to give as much as we could," said Melissa Eagan, a family friend and volunteer.

Brison's treatment is not FDA approved yet, which is why the family's insurance won't cover it. But the Ricker family says it's working.  When doctors told him it was time to call it quits after his tumor doubled in size, this treatment shrunk it to one third of its size.

The community has been running can drives once a month since July and have raised nearly $22,000 dollars. This latest drive lasted two days with six truck loads of cans.

"We had to call it quits last night because we literally ran the store out of their storage bins," Eagan said.

The grand total of counting cans for the past two days is $8,663.55. That is about 86,635 cans.

If you would like to make monetary donation you can do so here.

To donate cans, or follow the Ricker Family's journey click here.