Clancy King remembers the pain of a broken rib that wouldn’t heal. 

He was umpiring a baseball game in the summer of 2010 when a fellow player, a friend who works as a physical therapist, asked King to come into his office the next day so he could take a look. After a brief checkup, the therapist asked King to get an X-ray.

“The rib looked like it exploded … I went through a progression of trying to figure out what this was over the next couple of months and it turned out the diagnosis was multiple myeloma, which is a blood cancer, which is incurable,” King said. 

King went through multiple years of treatments, many of which took place in Salt Lake City at the Huntsman Cancer Institute. As a Montana Highway Patrol Trooper, he had a lot of leave time saved up from his 20 years. 

But, even with good insurance and plenty of time off, King was paying $50,000 out of pocket during his first year of treatment. That’s where Wings Regional Cancer Support was able to step in to help. 

“I got support from coworkers and the sheriff's office, the police department here — they were great … But, out of the blue when the Wings check came, it felt so different because it was from the community,” King said. 

Wings Cancer Regional Support gave around $300,000 to cancer patients in Flathead, Lincoln and Lake counties last year. The organization's 28th annual radiothon on Jan. 18 and 19 at Sportsman Ski Haus in Kalispell aims to help the group continue covering the out-of-pocket costs associated with cancer treatment. 

Ray Washtak and Jennifer Schaffner founded Wings in 1995. Schaffner was a social worker at Kalispell Regional Medical Center and Washtak had undergone treatment for multiple myeloma. The primary place for his treatment was in Arkansas and bills quickly started piling up, Wings organizer Teresa Dunn said.

“He realized there were a lot of out-of-pocket expenses associated with people seeking treatment that insurance doesn't cover,” Dunn said. “And even though he was a federal employee at the time and had really good insurance, the costs for travel and lodging really started to accumulate.” 

Washtak told the Daily Inter Lake in 2021 that he credited the generosity of the community with helping him shoulder the additional burdens associated with his cancer diagnosis, inspiring him to give back.

King also vowed to give back all of the money he was given during his time undergoing cancer treatments. 

“I was determined to get better and pay them back,” King said. “So, I was able to accomplish that too, and that felt good. With Wings and hearing other people's stories over the years, you know, I’m just a fortunate person.”

Wings began partnering with Bee Broadcasting in 1997 for the radiothon. It’s the not-for-profit’s dedicated fundraiser, along with a drive hosted with The Yaak River Tavern and Mercantile in May for families who live in Lincoln County. 

The radiothon serves to sustain efforts to provide ease of mind to local cancer patients like King, who said the generosity of the community allowed him to focus on getting better.

“Anytime you're sick all you want us to get better, whether it's the flu or whatever. You can't fix yourself when it's cancer. You know, you don't get better,” King said. “I put my faith in those people and it's just amazing what young smart people doing research and the treatment protocols that they came up with, it just blew my mind.”

Multiple myeloma is a cancer that forms in plasma cells, according to the Mayo Clinic. Healthy plasma cells help fight infections by making proteins called antibodies, which find and attack germs. Cancerous plasma cells build up in bone marrow, leading to the complications that come with the cancer. 

For King, the cancer was already causing damage to his ribs and had eaten a quarter-sized hole in his skull. Though his health care team assured him that multiple myeloma wouldn’t kill him quickly, it would cause his death in a matter of years if he did not seek treatment. So, he took off to Salt Lake City in 2010 to begin his new regimen of chemotherapy. He started keeping a blog, connected with other myeloma survivors in the Flathead Valley, and began friendships with his fellow patients at the Huntsman Cancer Institute.

“There were six of us that started on the same day in Salt Lake City and two of us survived. Some died within the first month because they take all your immunities away, they take your white blood cell count down to zero. So, if you get an infection, you're done,” King said.

He underwent chemotherapy treatment from October 2010 until the summer of 2013 and hasn’t done any since. He had to visit the hospital frequently to be checked and now only visits every two years. 

King’s treatment got him back on the right track, even healing his ribs and skull. He said when someone relapses with multiple myeloma and has to undergo another treatment, it lowers their chance of survival. 

“But shoot, I think when I went through treatment, it was like a 5% survival rate. You know, the odds were awful. But it's better now, and last spring I was talking to my oncologists in Salt Lake and they said ‘if you came in now, the treatment would be so different,’” King said. 

Cancer treatments vary between every patient, depending on the diagnosis, and have made huge strides since King went into treatment in 2010. 

But, one thing that hasn’t changed in the years since King’s treatment is the support given by Wings.

“You can choose to stay home and be upset about religion or politics, and stare at your television, or you can go out and help your community, and I guess it's just the type of people that choose to do those things,” King said. “But I've seen it over and over where it just helps so much and it doesn't have to be a lot of money. It’s just the sentiment of it, that’s what mattered to me.”

The Wings radiothon takes place Jan. 18 and 19, airing on Bee Broadcasting stations from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. Those FM stations include B-98, The Bear at 106.3, Outlaw Country at 95.0, KJJR at 107.9, Kool 105.1 and KSAM Sports Talk Radio at 102.7.

Donations can be sent to P.O. Box 7852, Kalispell, MT 59904, or to donate over the phone, call 406-257-WING (9464). To learn more about WINGS, visit wingsnwmontana.org.

Reporter Taylor Inman can be reached at 406-758-4433 or by emailing tinman@dailyinterlake.com