Help Angel beat cancer

To our friends and family,

My name is Morgan Villalobos and I am married to Angel Villalobos. My husband Angel has been diagnosed with stage IV melanoma and I would like to share his story with you.

Any donations will go directly to his past and future medical expenses.

Angel is 31 years old and as I said before has been diagnosed with late stage melanoma.  This type of cancer typically starts on the skin and in rare cases the eye.

Angel and I have been together since our teens and on June 3, 2017 got married. Not long after our honeymoon Angel started to notice how sore he had gotten.  The pain first started in his leg and we first visited a chiropractor to try and help him find some relief.  The chiropractor we visited told Angel that his hip bone was out of alignment and that is what was causing all of the pain.  After about three months of visits and no relief Angel started to lose hope.  During this time we started to find lumps on Angel’s body, forming fast and in random places, but most prominently the forearm.  After more and more pain we finally contacted a doctor that told Angel he was growing fatty tumors on his arm and leg.  At the time Angel also had stomach pain so while we were at the doctors he also ordered an x-ray of Angels kidney. 

We were referred to a surgeon to try and remove what we thought to be fatty tumors and after finding nothing on the x-ray of the kidney the doctor also ordered a CT scan of his abdomen.  On January 22, 2018 we visited a surgeon who stated that the lumps on Angel didn’t look to be fatty tumors and he would like to do an MRI. After arriving home from the CT scan and the appointment with the surgeon, our lives were changed forever.

Angel picked up the phone that night to find out that he had a mass in his stomach the size of a grapefruit.  The doctor knew it was cancer because it had spread throughout his abdomen.

After the worst couple of weeks of our lives, we discovered that the cancer was melanoma – skin cancer.  How could that be, Angels skin was blemish free?  We then found out that sometimes melanoma can start in the eye, but if that was the case he only had a 10% chance of survival.

The family was again shocked after the PET scan came back showing dozens and dozens of tumors throughout Angel’s body, including behind his eye, leading the Doctor to believe that may have been the starting point of the cancer.

Angel was started on immunotherapy and faced at least 2 years of treatments, with a chance of its success very slim, but we had hope.  Our hope was then cut short after nearly four months of treatments the immunotherapy shut down Angel’s thyroid and put him into stage 3 liver failure.  The Doctor then told us immunotherapy is not an option anymore. That cut his survival rate more than half. 

Angel is the rock of his family and touches lives wherever he goes. Since the time he became a part of our family he has become the cement that holds us together. Angel has been a large part of the community we live in with the amazing company he worked for, The Lindi Corp.  He works as a plumber and treasures being able to help people and becomes close friends with all of his customers.  Angel impacts lives wherever he goes.

Due to Angel’s strenuous job and extreme pain and sickness he hasn’t been able to go to work. I now work as much as I possibly can so I can provide for our home and the medical bills. Since his cancer diagnosis in January we have incurred thousands and thousands in medical bills. Angel has insurance but it has a very high deductible and we are being sent to collections.  The bills mean nothing as long as we can get Angel his treatment.

We have now learned of a hospital that will give Angel much better chances of survival. M.D. Anderson Cancer Center is in Houston, TX. We desperately need to get Angel there so we can find him a cure! We will have no income for the time we are in TX and have no idea if we will be there for two weeks or two years.

We would like to collect funds to help with medical expenses and travel related costs to receive care at M.D. Anderson in Houston, TX.

God bless.