We love you, Van Alstyne Family

Lucas and Laura Van Alstyne are admired, respected and loved by many, many people in this world. Since October 2017, they, along with their beautiful son, Jonah, have had their lives turned upside down by 33-year-old
Lucas' cancer diagnosis. This GoFundMe campaign intends to shower Lucas, Laura, and Jonah with love and support as they face this unimaginably difficult situation. It is our turn to show the Van Alstyne Family just how much we love them. 

After experiencing abdominal pain for a few weeks, Lucas was diagnosed with colon cancer. Just a few days later, Lucas had the tumor and part of his colon removed. Although the surgeon was able to remove all of the primary tumor, he found small tumors that had spread to his abdominal wall (peritoneum) and one tumor in his liver.  On 11/17/17 Lucas was officially diagnosed with Stage IV colon cancer and started receiving chemotherapy to treat the tumors. 

Lucas' chemo was successful in shrinking his tumors and on 2/20/18 he underwent cryoreduction and HIPEC surgery. It was a very invasive surgery, where, the surgeon removed all visible tumors which made the surgery a success. Lucas recovered from surgery and had another 6 rounds of chemo.

After many ups and downs, they received devastating news in June 2018: Lucas' cancer was back and it was extremely aggressive. On June 27, 2018, Laura posted a message titled, "Our Hearts are Broken" on MyLifeLine.org (link here ): 

"It's been a terribly hard few days and I'm afraid I have more devastating news. We had a long discussion with Lucas' oncologist yesterday. From a cancer perspective, we're just trying to buy as much time as we can with Lucas without decreasing his quality of life. We talked about chemo and, this is such a difficult thing to say, the doctor said that without chemo his prognosis is weeks and with chemo (assuming he responds) we would be looking at possibly months. Depending on how all of this plays out, we're still considering getting a second opinion at MD Anderson in Houston, but, honestly, it may be too late for that and we would want to get him there and back safely. We'll just take it one day at a time.

No one could have seen this coming and we don't blame his doctors or ourselves- it's just happened so quickly. Sometimes in the journey of life goals change; our goal now is to get him home and enjoy every day that we have with him, whatever that means. Lucas has said many times now that all he wants is to "have a few good days" and I think we will be able to give him that. Please continue to pray for all of us as we navigate the hardest part of this journey. Today, our hearts are broken."

Thank you for supporting this beautiful family in their journey. Together, we can show the Van Alstyne Family just how much they are loved and cherished by people from Pueblo, Denver, Golden, and beyond. WE LOVE YOU, VAN ALSTYNE FAMILY!