Hi Everyone. If you have followed Alysen's cancer journey through FB or CaringBridge, you already know her story and why we decided to finally start a fund. Ultimately, cancer is expensive, even with "good" insurance. The single largest expense is the wig, which is a significant cost. But add to that other co-pays for medicines, travel costs, hospital parking every week, and so on, it quickly becomes unmanageable. I am not sure how a typical middle class family deals with all of this on their own - especially if you are already struggling! We have really tried to resist doing this, but her needs are greater than our pride. We also have many people asking to help (especially with the wig).

We would also like to give back to Children's Hospital; much of what they do is not covered by insurance billing. All the activities, toys, stuffed animals, plush blankets, and projects for the kids come from donations—people like us who just appreciate what they have done for their child, and want future children dealing with this disease to have the same comfort and distractions that Alysen had when she was there. As you saw on our CaringBridge, they even have a dedicated kids channel at the hospital where Alysen made a time lapse video of herself building LEGO flowers. But the LEGO sets are also donations. Since we are big LEGO fans in this house, we will commit 10% of all donations to buying new sets for the children's cancer floors. We will hunt for the best deals to make that 10% go as far as possible, and of course, we will share the progress with you.

We also want to make it very clear, that we do not want ANYONE donating to us if it will cause any difficulty whatsoever. If you have a few extra bucks to SPARE, then great! But please do NOT give us a cent if you need it for you and your own family. We would rather go into a debt hole (and we will do so without hesitation if that's what we need to do for Alysen), then take resources away from others in need. We cannot put into words just how much we appreciate all the support we have received so far! Even just sharing this fund with others is a big help.

If/When Alysen gets to remission (as we certainly hope), and if there are funds left over, we intend to put it into a low risk account of some sort for her to use for medical expenses in the future. She will need tests the rest of her life, and there is always a significant chance or reoccurrence. Who knows if preexisting condition always be covered by law.

Here is the link to Alysen's Caring Bridge where you can see the entire story: https://www.caringbridge.org/site/b1492ac7-2b89-11f1-b640-99fe3b2bdae8

For those that do not want to use caring bridge, I will summarize our story here. If you already know it, you can skip all the rest of this!

Story:

In late February 2026, I brought Alysen to the Allergy/Asthma doctor because her asthma and skin rashes had been getting worse. Part of the process was to get a basic lung x-ray, which showed a cloudiness in one of her lungs. Dr said it appeared she had a touch of pneumonia, but since she had no cough we should just wait it out a bit. Well, a few weeks later she started coughing, so they gave her antibiotics and the cough seemed to get better. However, he asthma was getting worse...Another Xray... area of concern looks bigger. More antibiotics. And then one night, now March, Alysen wake me up at 2am because her neck hurts - there is a huge lump on her neck that wasn't there before. They give her the strongest antibiotic they can and schedule her for a CAT scan that same day. As a parent, a bit of panic is of course setting in by this point... and then you get that dreaded call: Its after hours, so there has to be something wrong... I clearly remember the Dr saying "I'm sorry, but its the worst case scenario. You need to get her to the hospital right now - there are doctors waiting for her." That thing in her lung - that's a tumor. Chest pain: also tumors. Her neck - tumors. And one of them is pushing her windpipe to the side and could cut off her breathing. No ER room, no waiting - just straight to the children's cancer floor.

Luckily Alysen was out with her mom, so whatever breakdown we had after hanging up was not witnessed by her. But, we still had to make an excuse to get her home quickly, and then figure out how to tell her what was going on in less then an hour. How do you tell an 11-year old that she was critically ill, with cancer. How do you tell your child something that you know will impact the rest of her life, and that will inevitably lead to the question - how long do i have? It really is just about the worst case scenario. It was hard on her. I know that a piece of her childhood innocence evaporated in that moment.

Diagnosis: Stage IV Nodular Sclerosis Hodgkin Lymphoma.

And here we are a couple months later. Hospital visits are routine now. Chemo days. Blood work days to see if she needs transfusions. Scans to check how effective the chemo is - or isn't. Hair loss. No more going to school. No more basketball. No more lakes. Dont play around dirt. Be careful of the sun, be careful of germs, be careful of some foods. Be careful not to hit that chemo port in your chest. Take all these medicines, but not those ones. Daddy has to give you a painful shot on Saturday morning to boost your immune system.

We are lucky to have a very resilient girl. We laugh, we play, we even make fun of cancer from time to time! Her latest scan (5/20/26) shows improvement in many of her tumors, so we seem to be on the right path as far as treatment goes. You can see more of her story on her caring bridge which we linked above.