Performing and hosting benefits were the only ways to fund research dedicated to finding a cure, or, at the very least, finding ways to put the disease into some kind of remission. Sharon had originally cold-called me to perform standup at a benefit in Santa Monica she had titled “Cool Comedy-Hot Cuisine.” I knew nothing about scleroderma. She was the founder and then CEO of the Scleroderma Research Foundation - a great woman, a mother of three who’d been stricken with the disease herself as a young mom. It began 25 years ago when I met Sharon Monsky, a woman who was to become one of the dearest friends of my life. I became familiar with scleroderma several years before my sister came down with it. In other patients, the blood vessels are predominantly affected, leading to profound loss of lung function over an extended period of time.
Scleroderma is an incurable chronic disease which means “hard skin.” In some patients scarring forms in the lungs and on the skin, changing a person’s appearance.
