Uplifting Outdoors helps sick children and disabled veterans experience the great outdoors – The Progress

Uplifting Outdoors helps sick children and disabled veterans experience the great outdoors  The Progress

PHILIPSBURG — Sixteen-year-old cancer patient CJ Coudriet of Philipsburg has a passion for the outdoors, so he started his own nonprofit organization, Uplifting Outdoors, to give children and combat disabled CJ Coudriet, 16, of Philipsburg founded Uplifting Outdoors to provide hunting and fishing trips to ill or disabled children and combat disabled veterans. The organization has a booth at Philipsburg Heritage Days where people can buy Uplifting Outdoors branded merchandise and receive information on the organization. From left, Coudriet, Johnna Dunlap and Russ Trude of Morrisdale. PHILIPSBURG — Sixteen-year-old cancer patient CJ Coudriet of Philipsburg has a passion for the outdoors, so he started his own nonprofit organization, Uplifting Outdoors, to give children and combat disabled veterans a chance to enjoy the great outdoors as well.

When he was 12, CJ was diagnosed with embryonal rhabdomyosarcoma, a rare form of cancer. Since then, CJ has undergone a battery of surgeries, chemotherapy and radiation treatments. His treatments included 42 weeks of chemotherapy, six weeks of radiation treatments, three life-flights, used more than 60 units of blood products and he has spent 100 days in the hospital, CJ said. He said the cancer treatments were extremely difficult and they took a toll on his life. “If it could have went wrong, it did,” CJ said of his treatments. His treatments are also