Just yesterday,
I was a person.
Today, I am a patient.
Just yesterday, I was a person.
Today, I am a patient.
You are here because you or someone close to you has been diagnosed with cholangiocarcinoma.
Ko-lan-gio-car-ci-noma
Bile duct cancer.
A diagnosis like this is disruptive.
It creates urgency, confusion, and pressure, all at once.
You do not need to understand everything right now.
You do need a clear, steady starting point.
This page is designed to help you regain control
and take the next step, calmly, deliberately, and without assumption.
You are not expected to navigate this alone.
This is a response-led place.
Here, action follows clarity, and decisions are taken deliberately, not reactively.
You will not be rushed.
You will not be overwhelmed with information.
The focus here is simple:
help you understand what matters now,
and support the steps that help you move forward.
Hello.
My name is Steve Holmes. I am a late stage 4 cholangiocarcinoma survivor, and co-founder of this foundation with my wife, Claire.
I did not plan for this diagnosis either. No one does.
When you arrive here, what you need is more than care. You need a clear response, taken step by step, with the right support around you.
That is what this foundation exists to provide.
Not theory. Not slogans. Practical guidance, shaped by lived experience, and tested under pressure.
The strength that matters most right now is not confidence or certainty. It is openness and a willingness to see clearly, to take the next right step, and adjust as you go.
Everything we do here is built on the hard-won knowledge of patients, caregivers, and clinicians who have faced this disease directly and learned what helps.
Our work is supported by a growing community of scientists and researchers who collaborate with us by choice, without compensation, because they understand the edge at which this work operates.
If you choose to move forward with us, you will not be asked to believe anything. Only to engage, stay grounded, and focus on what helps today.
Although we actively support and help advance health systems and public initiatives, this Foundation receives no government grants or financial support.
For the past eight years, the work of this Foundation has been sustained independently by Claire and me, because patients could not wait for systems to catch up.
That personal capacity is now exhausted. While donations have begun to come in, they are not yet sufficient to sustain the work at the level patients require.
As a patient-led initiative, we design and lead around cause, not speculation.
We do not fund cancer research in the abstract.
We close the loop on this cancer by closing the gaps left between diagnosis, survival, and cause, converting lived survival and real patient outcomes into systems that save lives, prevent recurrence, and enable true prevention.
The cure is in the cause.
Helping carry this work forward is how prevention becomes real.
Steve
“Just yesterday, I was a person. Today, I am a patient. I must become the best patient I can be, so I can become that person again.” — Stephen A. Gamble-Holmes (Steve)
