Woman Seeks Answers About Disease That Took Her Mom

By Sam Strike

If you don’t know what Scleroderma is, you’re among the target audience for Project Scleroderma: Beneath the Surface, a documentary created by a Havertown woman that is premiering this month.

In 2009, Christy McCaffrey lost her mother Sandy Selfridge to the autoimmune disease. The professional hairstylist “didn’t know anything about filmmaking when I set out to do this,” she told Haverford Patch.

So she called on friends J.C. Costa and Bill Connell at New Pace Productions in Ardmore and asked them if they would help her create a documentary that would spread awareness of the disease.

“It was a whirlwind of ‘What just happened?’ when it was all said and done,” she said of her mom’s illness. “We had never heard of it… Doctors didn’t know that much about it. It left me wanting to know more.”

McCaffrey appears in the film, which includes her mother’s story, but much of the material comes from patients and doctors about the disease. Comedian Bob Saget, who lost his sister to the disease, signed on to narrate the film.

“She’d be proud of what we’re doing,” McCaffrey said of her mom. “Even though we had to lose her to this disease she’d be happy to know it wasn’t in vain.”

The film is showing at the Ritz East Theatre in Philadelphia on Thursday July 25. The doors will open at 7:30 p.m. and the film will begin at 8 p.m. It runs 45 minutes.

Click here to buy tickets.