Help Tomas Overcome Stage Four Cancer

Hello everyone,

I want to share Tomas' story in hopes of touching your hearts and gaining your support in this very difficult time.

"My name is Tomas Hernandez. In November 2023, I developed stomach pain; it was so severe that every time it hurt, I had to hold on to something not to fall. When I went to the doctor, they said it was an ulcer, and they prescribed treatment for six weeks, but the pain did not go away. On December 31st, I went to bed at 9 pm. In the middle of the night, I got my first seizure. My now-wife called 911, and after I woke up, firefighters were in my house. I asked, "What are you doing?" and I passed out again. I regained consciousness and walked up to the ambulance, where I had my second seizure, and my heart completely stopped. After the paramedics used the defibrillator, they rushed me to the French Hospital in San Luis Obispo, where I had my third seizure. Here is where they decided to put me in an induced coma to stop the seizures. I was in an ICU for three days, plugged into a breathing machine. When I was unconscious, they told my wife that I wasn’t going to make it through and that if I woke up, I would be in a vegetative state. By a miracle, I woke up on January 3 with no side effects or symptoms. I spent two more days in ICU, and then they discharged me, but this is where the nightmare started.

I kept having abdominal pain and my appointment with my gastroenterologist wasn't until March 4th. A colonoscopy was ordered, and they found a big mass obstructing my colon. The doctor cut a piece of the mass to send to the lab for a biopsy. On March 14, 2024, at the age of 25, I received the devastating news that I had stage two colorectal cancer. The doctors thought that the reason for my seizures was my body reacting to the tumor.

In May, I had to go to the emergency hospital again because the pain was unbearable, and the obstruction in my colon was causing a lot of pain. I finally received treatment in June, radiation, and chemotherapy together to start fighting the cancer.

The chemotherapy treatment was nothing compared to what radiation did to my body; it was so painful that I could feel my body burning down as if my intestines were melting. For a month and a half, I could not get out of bed; it was so painful that I gave up eating or drinking water. My starting weight was 185 lbs.; after treatments, I went down to 122 lbs. I had to wait 6 weeks for my body to begin healing. By my fifth week, they found a lot of fluids in my stomach. My oncologist sent an order request for paracentesis, in which they extracted 6 liters of fluids. They sent the fluids to the lab to find out where they came from and found cancer cells. I started a second chemotherapy right away to control the cancer cells. The stomach pain came back again, the pain was so intense, worse than before, that I ended up in the hospital again. The doctors rushed me to surgery to find where the pain was coming from, only to discover that my intestines were perforated and fecal matter had leaked through my body. Not able to continue with surgery because it had metastasized in my intestines, the doctors decided not to proceed any further.

After a few days, fecal matter started leaking through my incisions, which was causing an infection that my body is fighting right now. They are giving me the most potent antibiotics I can take, but the infection doesn't want to give up. I need to get rid of the infection in order to continue my treatment for my now stage four cancer."

Please help me help them in these difficult times where anything helps, as they need monetary help to continue this journey.

-Deysi