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Jeff Snyder ALS GoFundMe

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Hello, Family and Friends of Jeff Snyder!

My name is Stephen Ranaghan. Some of Jeff’s other friends and I are creating a funding campaign to help Jeff and his family with their ongoing financial burdens as a result of his fight with ALS (Lou Gehrig's Disease). Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, is a progressive neurodegenerative disease. It attacks cells in the brain and spinal cord that are needed to keep muscles moving, leading to muscle weakness and paralysis. Eventually, the disease robs a person of the ability to speak, eat, move, and even breathe. Jeff was diagnosed with this incurable, terminal disease in October 2019, and over the last year, he has gone from being active and athletic to not being able to walk or take care of his daily needs.

As with most devastating diseases, the expenses related to this disease are great, and include things like medical bills for different types of doctors; medical devices, such as leg braces and a custom wheelchair whose cost rivals that of a BMW; and even devices for daily living, such as ramps to get in and out of the house and special speech-to-text software to aid in continuing to use a computer. We would like to try to take some of the stress off of Jeff and his family, and get some of these expenses covered, so that they can try to focus more on making memories during Jeff’s last years, months, and days.

Jeff has a very unique story. He has always been an athlete, starting with baseball and basketball as a kid, and moving to softball, volleyball, and tennis as an adult. His greatest sports moment was starting to play hockey on a recreational team at the age of 43, having had no prior hockey experience. From 2010 through 2019, Jeff played 700+ hockey games, but was stopped in his tracks by this horrible disease.

In addition to being an athlete, Jeff has been a self-employed entrepreneur for most of his working years. In 1994, after working in someone else’s recruiting firm for just a few years, Jeff started his own executive recruiting firm, specializing in recruiting and placing information technology and information security executives. Jeff added performance coaching to his business in 2008 and currently, he is an amazing coach and mentor to information technology professionals and professionals in the security space. Jeff experiences great joy from his coaching calls, and he has vowed to continue his daily coaching activities until he flat out cannot.

As if ALS by itself were not enough of a burden, Jeff has spent the last decade fighting against genetic setbacks he had nothing to do with creating. In September 2010, Jeff survived a heart attack that came to him despite having no preexisting conditions. The heart attack occurred soon after his 75th hockey game of 2010.

During the stent placement for the heart attack, doctors discovered an aortic aneurysm that had not yet burst. Jeff was monitored for 3 ½ years until it was necessary to have open heart surgery in April 2014, to repair the aneurysm. Following the recovery from that surgery, the heart surgeon told Jeff to go live his life normally and cleared him to continue playing hockey.

Then, in September 2018, while skating in the first period of a hockey game, Jeff collapsed on the ice. This time, he was having ventricular tachycardia, which caused him to go into cardiac arrest. He was given CPR and was shocked with the rink’s defibrillator, before being rushed to the hospital. He spent several days in a medically-induced coma, and no one knew if he would wake up or not.

This guy not only woke up but, with the doctor’s permission, he got back on his skates and played 50 more hockey games before experiencing a mini-stroke that affected his balance. That didn’t even stop Jeff. He got back on his skates again and skated 29 more hockey games until ALS took him down. Over 10 years, with multiple setbacks and recoveries, Jeff diligently skated over 700 hockey games.

Jeff’s friendship and work mean a lot to me and to countless others. His coaching has changed so many lives for the better. Jeff has an amazing passion for life and for the work he does helping other people. Although he is continuing to coach great people until he can no longer talk, I’m sure you can only imagine the expenses Jeff and his family have encountered over the last decade, which have depleted their savings. We feel a strong need to help Jeff, by assisting him with some of the new financial demands that now burden his family. Would you please consider joining us in this GoFundMe campaign, by donating to the cause and by also sharing the campaign with your contacts by email and/or social media? We all thank you from the bottom of our hearts for any help you decide to give.
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Donations 

  • Anonymous
    • $50
    • 4 yrs
  • John Austin Ricks
    • $50
    • 4 yrs
  • Samuel De La Ossa
    • $50
    • 4 yrs
  • Anonymous
    • $1,000
    • 4 yrs
  • Lisa Soelle
    • $200
    • 4 yrs
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Organizer and beneficiary

Stephen Ranaghan
Organizer
Arlington, MA
Wendy Snyder
Beneficiary
  • Medical

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