Independent Games Festival chairman raising funds for battle with cancer

Journalist and chairman of the Independent Games Festival, Brandon Boyer, is seeking donations to assist in medical expenses incurred in his fight against cancer through GoFundMe.

Boyer was diagnosed with cancer last year and was immediately required to have a few feet of his small intestine and a section of liver removed in August. While Boyer had applied for health insurance well before he was diagnosed with cancer, his health insurance company Humana denied his claims and left him with more than $100,000 in medical expenses.

As Boyer stated in the medical examination before obtaining health insurance that he had stomachaches in the past five years, he had fallen under a fine-print clause that said "any signs of illness that could possibly have led a doctor to a diagnosis since 2008 were cause for denying any compensation for any ailment of pretty much my entire alimentary canal." His situation is not covered by the new Health Insurance Marketplace because it only covers events from January 2014 onwards.

Boyer launched a GoFundMe campaign this week to raise funds to assist with the $110,000 in medical expenses incurred. His first post-op scan returned a positive result, but he still requires expensive ongoing monthly treatment to stay alive.

"The silver lining is that I'm still alive and I'm back on my feet and my health is stable for now — I get regular monthly treatment meant to slow my decline, and my first post-surgery scan came back with essentially good news — and also that the support I've had throughout all of this has been incredible," Boyer wrote on the campaign's page. "That support may include friends and colleagues also coming together outside this campaign to help get me through this, and any additional assistance outside my immediate needs will be put into the cost of that on-going treatment."