For Hope is a 1996 ABC

American Broadcasting Company

The American Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. Its first broadcast on television was in 1948...

 TV movie starring Dana Delany

Dana Delany

Dana Welles Delany is an American film, stage, and television actress, producer, host and health activist.After various roles in the early career, Delany garnered her first leading role in 1987 in the short-lived NBC sitcom Sweet Surrender and achieved wider fame in 1988–1991 as Colleen McMurphy...

 and directed by Bob Saget

Bob Saget

Robert Lane "Bob" Saget is an American stand-up comedian, actor, and television host. Although he is best known for his roles as Danny Tanner in Full House, host of America's Funniest Home Videos and Future Ted Mosby on How I Met Your Mother, Saget is also known outside of television for his blue...

. Based on Saget's sister Gay, the movie showed the experience of a young woman fatally afflicted with the disease scleroderma

Scleroderma

Systemic sclerosis or systemic scleroderma is a systemic autoimmune disease or systemic connective tissue disease that is a subtype of scleroderma.-Skin symptoms:...

. Other cast members included Tracy Nelson

Tracy Nelson (actress)

Tracy Kristine Nelson is an American actress.-Early life:Tracy Nelson is a third generation performer; her parents were Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee Ricky Nelson and actress/artist Kristin Nelson . She has three younger siblings: Matthew Nelson, Gunnar Nelson of the '90s rock group Nelson,...

 and Chris Demetral

Chris Demetral

Christopher Peter "Chris" Demetral is a former American actor best known as Jeremy Tupper, the son of newly divorced New York book editor Martin Tupper on the HBO series Dream On...

.

Dana Delany had to have some significant prosthetic makeup

Prosthetic makeup

Prosthetic makeup is the process of using prosthetic sculpting, molding and casting techniques to create advanced cosmetic effects...

 applied to simulate the various degrees of disfigurement the main character, Hope, experienced as a result of the disease. http://www.themakeupgallery.info/disfigured/disfigured/hope.htm

The original airing achieved the top Nielsen ratings

Nielsen Ratings

Nielsen ratings are the audience measurement systems developed by Nielsen Media Research, in an effort to determine the audience size and composition of television programming in the United States...

 for the time slot. The movie has periodically been re-rerun on various TV channels, and is available on DVD and VHS for a $20 donation at the Scleroderma Research Foundation.

An extra feature of the movie was that it included a cameo appearance by Scleroderma Research Foundation founder Sharon Monsky

Sharon Monsky

Sharon Monsky founded the Scleroderma Research Foundation. Monsky was born in Omaha, Nebraska on October 23, 1953. She was a competitive figure skater as a teenager....

.