Matthew Ortiz’s cancer journey

I would like you to know a little bit about my brother Matthew. He is 26 years old and extremely hard working. Outside of work, he was very passionate about the gym and planned on working towards competing in bodybuilding competitions in the near future. He always took good care of his body and now at only 26 years old my brother is battling cancer.

Back in early December, my brother began having very bad stomach cramps/ pains, and was getting sick non stop. It got to the point where he decided to go to the emergency room to see if they could help him. They gave him a CT scan and said they found a mass in his lower intestine. Unsure of what it was, they decided to preform an exploratory surgery but didn’t find anything. They wouldn’t give him a colonoscopy because his intestines were inflamed from excessive vomiting. They told him to schedule his follow ups and suggested that he avoid gluten because they suspected he had celiac disease due to his extremely low iron.

One month later in January, the pain and vomiting had not slowed down and his follow ups were not for another month, he decided to go back to the hospital where thankfully they preformed a colonoscopy. The results came back that they had found a 6 cm mass on his colon that was unfortunately cancerous. He spent 12 days in the hospital where they preformed a hemicolectomy, removing 20 cm of his colon as well as the tumor. Shortly after the surgery, the biopsy of the tumor and lymph nodes tested positive and the doctors graded him with stage 3 colon cancer. He then had to go through with chemotherapy and has completed 5 rounds which consists of pills and infusions. This has been extremely hard on him and his body. The chemo makes his chest and back tighten which causes him to have an extremely difficult time breathing.

Between surgeries, doctors, chemotherapy and other bills,this has been an extremely hard and stressful time for him financially and not being able to work for all these months has just made it that much harder. Due to Matt’s diagnosis he will be unable to work for the foreseeable future and that is why I have created this go fund me. My goal is to help Matt on his path to regaining his health, and to allow him to prioritize his recovery and not worry about his financial issues.

On behalf of myself and my parents we would like to thank everyone for supporting Matthew at this difficult time.