Montgomery County’s Daniel Keota launched the Die Laughing Foundation in hopes of bringing people together through the power of laughter while raising money for the Penn Lung Transplant program, reports Todd Haas for 6abc.
Keota is on the program’s wait list for a double lung transplant. He was diagnosed on April 1, 2017.
“I didn’t know I was sick,” he said. “I didn’t know I had anything wrong. I had an abscess. It was growing inside my lungs. I never saw it coming.”
He needed something to take his mind off things when he decided to take Jay Yoder and Steve Rinaldi’s comedy classes for six weeks.
“At that time, I had no intentions on doing any more comedy,” he said. “I was literally doing it as a distraction.”
However, something clicked, so he decided to start the foundation with his wife, Chelsea Keota.
“We go to so many shows anyways,” said Chelsea Keota. “Let’s just throw a show and see what happens.”
Though he remains optimistic, he acknowledges that surviving the next two years is not guaranteed.
“So if I go out, I’m going to go out laughing,” he said.
Watch the entire segment on Daniel Keota and the Die Laughing Foundation at 6abc.
