Actor Brad Garrett, the multiple-Emmy winning actor known for his role in the CBS hit series “Everybody Loves Raymond,” has spent his career making people laugh. But his life, he tells SurvivorNet in a candid interview, has been filled with tragedy.
Over the course of the last 15 years, Garett, 59, has lost his father to colon cancer, one older brother, Paul, to pancreatic cancer, his other older brother, Jeff, to lung cancer, and his best friend to a rare mouth cancer.
"People were starting to call me the plague, because I had so many people in my life that got sick," Garrett says from his home in Los Angeles, where he's been filming his latest TV shows, ABC’s "Single Parents" and the Showtime series “Penny Dreadful.”
Embed from Getty Images "But I don't call it dying, I call it, 'Going to the big casino,'" Garrett says with a laugh in his instantly recognizable baritone.
His losses, Garrett tells SurvivorNet, has given him an incredible amount of gratitude for his own health and for the health of his two children.
They also inspired him to help others. He founded the Maximum Hope Foundation in 2007 — named for his children, Max, 21, and Hope, 19 — to help families navigate the financial and emotional challenges of caring for a child with a critical illness. In 2018, he founded Paws For Paul – The Paul Ames Pet Therapy Program, at the Nathan Adelson Hospice in Las Vegas, in honor of his pet-loving brother, who died just six weeks after his diagnosis.
Brad Garrett (left) with his late brother, Paul Ames. (Image source: Brad Garrett/ Las Vegas Review Journal).
Paul, Garrett says, had been the last person he saw before going on stage when doing stand-up comedy at the Brad Garrett Comedy Club in Las Vegas, which Paul ran, and the first person he'd see when he left it. Paul had encouraged his brother to pursue comedy, says Garrett, recalling that when his brother was in hospice care, he hounded Garrett to leave his side and go crack some jokes.
"[Paul] would say to me, 'Get your ass to the club and try to be funny tonight,'" Garrett says. "And I'd do it for him. We all needed humor to get through that. Humor was kind of our go-to.”
The Maximum Hope Foundation
The original inspiration behind his organization, Garrett says, was yet another person in his life diagnosed with cancer — or rather, two people: both of the young children in a family close to Garrett’s.
When his own children were young, Garett tells SurvivorNet, his family was close with another family whose daughter was diagnosed with a rare form of leukemia, and whose son also named Max was diagnosed with a cancer called Ewing sarcoma. The daughter is now cancer-free, but Max died at age 11.
The family had struggled financially throughout their children’s treatment, and Garrett stepped in to help with routine costs such as groceries and other daily necessities. He was then moved to launch his foundation.
"When you have a child that has a life-limiting illness, at least one parent usually has to quit their job to be at home," Garrett explains. "And they come up against some very daunting financial scenarios where they have trouble sometimes. Even with insurance, deductibles alone can wipe you out."
Humor as a Coping Mechanism -- Brad Garrett is Not Alone
Cancer-Related Financial Toxicity Is More than Just the Medical Bills
The high costs that go with a cancer journey the costs that Garrett's foundation is working to alleviate affect thousands of families each year. Over 60% of families facing pediatric cancer report losing more than 10% of their household income, and 20% lose more than 40% of their household income.
In a previous conversation with SurvivorNet about the financial toxicity of a cancer diagnosis, Dr. Nina Shah, a hematologist at the University of California San Francisco, told SurvivorNet that when it comes to the high costs associated with cancer treatmentit can be helpful for patients to speak with social workers.
"The best way to look at this and find the resources that are available is to speak with the social worker associated with [your cancer center]," Dr. Shah said. "Because that person usually knows what resources are available and what you can do to access them."
According to Garrett, the majority of families that Maximum Hope helps come through referrals from social workers.
"We have social workers that reach out to us from the hospitals," Garrett says. "And we offer a unique type of aid that isn't really out there right now."
