Terry Bolt started playing World of Warcraft with her sister at 60, shortly before she was due to retire. Two weeks after she left her job as a middle school teacher, doctors diagnosed her with an aggressive form of hormonal cancer and gave her six months — at most — to live.
That was four years ago. Today, she counts the massively multiplayer online game as a distraction from the tough times, a place to sound off without worrying family, and a hang out friends.
Her daughter filmed a documentary based on the experiences this MMO grandma and others have had in one of the world’s most notable online games, one that 7.4 million people play. WoW MoM just launched a Kickstarter to pay for the movie’s editing.
“I never ever thought any video game would be worth playing until i started playing WOW,” Terry said. “It’s a whole community.”
Above: Terry Bolt turned to online friends in Warcraft when she didn’t want to burden her family.
Her daughter, comedian Andie Bolt, recorded an episode on the hugely popular tech and comedy Nerdist podcast with host Chris Hardwick a couple of years ago. He asked her what was in her standup at the time, and she told him, “Well, it’s kind of like a lot of cancer and World of Warcraft.”
When pressed, she told him her mother’s story, and Hardwick suggested they should all go to BlizzCon, the annual convention for Blizzard Entertainment fans. Terry gushed about the idea, Andie said.
The road to BlizzCon, or how to cosplay as a goblin at 63
Terry listed off two things she wanted to do before she died. She wanted to publish a young adult book — the science-fiction adventure Bubble Riders, which ended up as one of the premium awards for the documentary’s Kickstarter. And she wanted to cosplay as a Warcraft character at BlizzCon.
Above: Tedi, Andie, and Terry Bolt in their BlizzCon cosplay costumes.
All right, the family decided. We all will dress up. But then Blizzard canceled the 2012 convention.
“When your mom has 27 tumors in her liver, it’s like, ‘Ah, dammit,'” Andie Bolt said. “You don’t have that kind of time.”
But Terry had found a surgeon at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, where Andie lives. (Terry lives on a ranch in the Kern River Valley, off the grid, about four hours north in California’s Central Valley.) And that surgeon diagnosed her three large tumors as the symptom of a much more systemic disease: Neuroendocrine Tumors/Carcinoids, or NET for short.
NET is essentially a hormonal cancer: Anywhere hormones can go, so can the cancer cells. It’s the type of cancer that claimed Steve Jobs, whose eventual tumor site was in his pancreas. Unlike most cancers, it doesn’t respond to chemotherapy. Surgery is one option to extend life.
15 hours of surgery, 15 pounds of tumors
The new oncologist felt that they could operate. Six hours in, the doctors came out to visit with Andie Bolt and the rest of Terry’s family. It was so much worse than they expected.
“They came out after six hours and said, it’s the worst case we’ve ever seen,” Andie said. The six-hour surgery would stretch on to 15 hours, and in all, the doctors removed 15 pounds of tumors from the small woman’s body. There were still tiny tumors everywhere. But by 2012, Terry finally started to recover from the operation.
The video is still shown at the center for instructional purposes.
The surgery couldn’t cure Terry, but it did give her a shot at a longer life. When BlizzCon actually happened in 2013, the family went as planned.
Above: Terry’s goblin in World of Warcraft.
Terry’s sister, Tedi, who had gotten her into World of Warcraft to start with, went as a Pandaren, and Terry went as her level 30 Goblin. She has two max-level characters, but she felt that little one just looked more like her, Andie said.
Getting the goblin in the picture: The movie shoot begins
Above: Terry Bolt, left, and daughter, Andie Bolt, at BlizzCon in 2012.
Video professionals shot 17 hours of film a day with them from the convention, Andie said. After they finished, Hardwick suggested that it could be something more. The family and crew had talked with other players who had used WoW as therapy during hard times, whether from personal issues or medical ones.
What about telling all of these stories, not just Terry’s? And so the documentary was born.
“When your mom goes from ‘I don’t want to do this any more’ to ‘Hey, let’s make a movie,’ you get really motivated,” Andie said. They’ve been working on the film for 18 months, with labor from a variety of industry professionals who mostly worked for free.
“Well, I bought pizza today. …” Andie joked. When I spoke with her, she had five people camped in her living room, answering questions on the Kickstarter. “My sound guy, who never gives me a discount, ever, wouldn’t let me pay him.
“Over the years in this industry, you lose faith. This project has flipped that on its head.”
The Warcraft community offers its support
All of it is the result of Hardwick’s nudging and the incredible family that Warcraft players have become for her mom, Andie said.
“You don’t talk about what’s going on with your family or your husband, because they worry. You talk to the people online,” she said. While the deaths of other cancer patients Terry has met online has been a blow, she’s been supported and befriended by players all across the country and in Canada.
Above: Terry and Andie Bolt at an event promoting awareness of NET cancers.
Andie said she first found out how much those players meant to her mother when they made the trek to the mailbox at the end of the drive and found a package of juice inside.
It turns out some game friends in Canada had mailed it because they read the juice could help cancer patients.
“I said, this is so weird — who are these people? People from in-game, she said. She and my aunt totally reconnected and became best friends because of Warcraft.”
Terry talks with her friends online about things she won’t talk with her husband or daughter about, Andie said. “Dad still thinks it’s called World of Witchcraft.
“My mom is a strong lady. I didn’t realize how little she was talking about it at home. When my mom got sick, she said, ‘Eh, the last thing your father wants to hear about is that. I didn’t want to be a burden.’ I didn’t realize she never told him anything.
“In game, you’re accomplishing something, not just talking about your problems. For her, she’s not a burden to her loved ones.”
‘They don’t have to know you’re sick’
The family knows the future probably isn’t bright. But having friends in Warcraft, including some who had cancer themselves or who had family members with the disease, has helped her mother, Andie said.
Above: Terry Bolt
“You can be beautiful, strong, a handsome man, an elf,” Terry said. “Anything you wanna be, or can’t be in real life. You can go to a new world where you can meet new friends, and they don’t have to know you’re sick.”
Andie warned her mother that, like all things on the Internet, the documentary might meet with some negative reaction.
“It doesn’t matter if you’re an adorable grandma, the trolls are going to come,” Andie told her. “She’s like, ‘I don’t care. I’m spreading awareness [of NET].’ ”
Andie says if there’s one thing she hopes people get from the film, it’s that it is OK to share the difficulties they experience with their loved ones, no matter where they are.
“It doesn’t matter if they’re online or sitting next to you, it’s okay to talk with them,” Andie said. “People are going to see the positive side of the gaming community. Maybe buy them a game you can play together. …
“There’s never a remission. We don’t use the word remission with this kind of cancer. My therapist should get producer credit on this film. But opening up this world has been fascinating and amazing.”
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