In January of 2021, my friends, Shane and Alicia Fishbein and their three beautiful children, Sage, Micha and Haven, moved from Cupertino CA to Boulder, CO to pursue a promising business opportunity for dad.  By the end of January, Shane began experiencing strange symptoms: insomnia, lack of appetite, food tasting bad, sensitivity to smells, severe fatigue, abdominal pain and muscle weakness. As the weeks progressed, Shane's health steeply declined. He rapidly transitioned from cycling daily, swimming, running, playing soccer and surfing, to barely having the strength to get out of bed each day. Shane's activity became limited to mostly resting and minimally participating with his family when his strength would permit. It became increasingly difficult for Shane to lead a normal life and operating his new chiropractic practice became impossible.

In April, suspecting that dad's decline was linked to environmental conditions, the family had their Colorado home tested and discovered toxic mold. A decision was made to immediately move out and the family returned to CA where Shane could rest and heal. Shortly after returning to the golden state, Shane received bloodwork results that pointed to something far more serious than mold toxicity. Following a CT scan, Shane was diagnosed with an aggressive Stage 4 melanoma that has metastasized to his liver, bones and brain. The prognosis is not encouraging but we are hopeful that, with the necessary treatment, Shane will survive this cancer.

Because of Shane’s severely weakened condition, he is unable to work and Alicia cannot resume her demanding line of work while caring for Shane and their three children during this difficult time. Ironically, amidst this trial of a lifetime, the Fishbein's also learned that they are expecting a fourth child in the new year.

Healthless, jobless but not hopeless, Shane is currently undergoing therapeutic treatment at a cancer clinic in Vienna Austria, (where he is benefitting from supplemental drug treatment that isn't available in the US). Each therapy session costs approximately $50K and while some of this is expected to be covered by their insurance, the family anticipates that their out of pocket expenses will materially exceed their available benefits. Additionally, the family is bearing the financial challenge of having to front the cost of treatment in order to be eligible for partial reimbursement from their insurance, ( a process which can take up to six months). Following Shane's current treatment in Vienna, the family expects that he will require at least one more treatment this year and one - two, next year.  

In order to sustain Shane's cancer treatment over the next 18 critical months, the Fishbein family needs financial help. Their initial efforts to raise donations through their immediate circle of family and friends have tremendously helped, however, the purpose of this campaign is to help magnify those efforts in order to cover the approximately $200K in out of pocket medical expenses the family estimates they will need. All proceeds from this campaign are solely accessible by Shane's wife, Alicia, to pay for Shane's treatment and other related out of pocket expenses. It is my sincere hope and prayer that we can materially help my friend and his family by leveraging the incredible power of crowd funding during their time of need. It is Shane’s deepest desire to survive, to once more be the strong, vibrant dad, husband and athlete he was, and to meet his fourth child.

If you have already donated to help the Fishbein family, we thank you! If you haven't yet and would like to help, you can do so by donating to this campaign.

We are also explicitly requesting everyone's help to share Shane's story with as many friends and groups as possible through social media by posting the link to this campaign, ( https://gofund.me/0e51728f ), and encouraging them to do the same. Our success here is largely dependent on our ability to receive help from those individuals and groups outside of the Fishbein's circle of friends.

Thank you for your generosity and for your willingness to help us share Shane's story.

To help keep everyone updated on Shane's progress, his family also created this blog.