Stage 3a Colon Cancer Diagnosis

Hi, my name is Meghan and I am fundraising for my husband, Luke, and our family. Luke has been experiencing severe abdominal pain for more than 6 months, and has had multiple trips to the emergency room for the pain. He has lost 50+/- pounds since the pain has started, and has had difficulty keeping food down. On July 17, 2022, Luke experienced great difficulty staying awake, and would vomit with just a sip of water. In the middle of the night, I woke our two young children to rush Luke to the emergency room for a third time in a month and a half. He was quickly admitted and texted me letting me know he was about to undergo emergency surgery to remove a blockage they had found in imaging. We were told that it looked like a severe case of diverticulitis and that Luke would need to have his sigmoid colon removed in the near future, but for now they had flushed out a very bad infection that was near sepsis. His sigmoid colon had multiple perforations, but we were hopeful that removing the sigmoid colon and resectioning would occur in about 6 months. After recovering in the hospital for a week, Luke finally got to come home! This excitement was short-lived though, as a return trip to the emergency room happened just 3 and 1/2 days after being home. Again, Luke was admitted into the hospital where they closely monitored him to see if he could clear a new blockage on his own. After 2 days, it was evident Luke would be unable to do so and his condition was rapidly deteriorating. At this point it had been 10 days since Luke had been able to eat. They rolled Luke back for surgery where they removed his sigmoid colon which accounted for about 1/5 of his colon and placed an ostomy bag. While in recovery, The surgeon sent Luke's: and other pieces they had cut out from his small intestine to be tested. 2 days after Luke's surgery, on Saturday August 6th, we were informed that my husband and father to our two amazing children has stage 3 colon cancer, And the blockage they were moved in the colon was no normal blockage but a 5cm tumor that had spread to some lymph nodes and was trying to turn cancerous in his small intestine. They told us Luke needed to undergo CT scans and MRIs to ensure the cancer had not metastasized. Wow there are no evident tumors elsewhere, Luke does have a spot on his kidney that is too small to know for sure if it is a cyst or a tumor, and we will continue to monitor the spot. In about 3 weeks Luke will begin his first round of chemo. He will have chemo for the next 6 months. In this time we expect him to continue to feel weak as his body tries to recover from having a major surgery and as we get used to this new and unexpected life with an ostomy bag. He is currently in a great deal of pain from the incision which is about 10 inches and stapled together.

While we are grateful that he receives short term disability through his employer, We are only receiving 60% of his income. We are a one income household as I am a stay-at-home mother of our children and a student. Luke's medical bills are mounting and will continue to mount, as will the stack of bills we have. We are beginning to struggle to maintain our bills, such as rent and electric, and will also see an increase in our cost for gas to travel to and from multiple appointments, home health care nurses, and changing the quality of food that Luke eats to organic, just to name a few. Any help you can donate is greatly appreciated, and will allow Luke to focus on staying healthy instead of worrying about losing our home.