Mark's Medical Fund

My name is Maddison Cervantes, and I come from a family made up entirely of unconditional love and a lot of inside jokes. My parents, Mark and Kim, have been happily married for 26 years, and it has never been a question that my siblings and I hold a place of utmost importance in each other’s hearts. Anything that Nick, Meghan or I have ever needed my parents have provided, we spent our childhood in the most beautiful home and were only burdened with the simplest of worries. It’s nothing but smooth sailing for a child when your parents spend their lives reminding you of how loved you are. 

When I was a little girl who questioned her daddy on the concept of death, the answer I always got from him was, "We don't have time for that." The only way we were going to Heaven was together; that was our plan but ironically enough, life has a tendency of getting in the way.

Three teenagers walking into a hospital room with their father hooked up to about forty five cables and a tube rammed in his nose is, for lack of a better word, shitty. My siblings and I walking into the same scenario, however, but with the hospital bed containing an angry Mark Cervantes (hunting and meat-eating enthusiast, born with a sarcastic tongue, calluses on his hands and gripping a cup of whiskey) well that was downright petrifying.

In 2011, my junior year of high school, our father's stomach had been upset for a few days. This came as a shock to us being that my dad simply didn’t get sick, and he surely didn’t get sick enough to miss work. 

When he ended up in an emergency surgery for a bowel obstruction a week later, it became clear to my family that things were going to be different; we just didn’t know how different.

My dad had six inches of his colon removed during the surgery, followed by twelve treatments of chemotherapy and another surgery to reconstruct his bowels, all over the course of six months. He had colon cancer.

After some serious adjusting, my family rapidly transformed into a support system for each other. Regardless of the frustration that was brought about from our immediate change in lifestyle, particularly from the man himself, there were never any doubts that my dad would make it. Not even when the cancer came back a year later, right before I was heading off to college.

It was the same process; chemo, surgery, chemo. We knew the drill. It was never any less scary or infuriating, but losing my father was simply never a thought that crossed our minds and he was always in very good hands with City of Hope. After 12 more rounds of chemo and another surgery where he lost six more inches of his colon, I was walking to an Economics exam when I got word from my mother that my dad was cancer-free again. Not even the mediocre grade I got on the test put a damper on my mood. This was the spring of 2014.

We didn’t even get a full summer of freedom, though. This is when it became clear to my mother that things needed to be taken into different hands. She found a doctor who offered a promising clinical trial at UCSD Hospital where she began taking my dad for weekly infusions (this was better than the chemo because it didn’t take as much of a toll on his body.) However, it was only two months later that a CT scan showed the infusions were not working.

Directly after Christmas 2014, a similar feeling of sickness (constipation) trapped my father at home again. The Monday I started back at school after winter break, he was admitted into UCSD with another bowl obstruction. It was starting all over again, except this time, my father was not in the best of hands.

The doctors at UCSD informed my mother that there was not much they could do for him and wanted to send him home with a drain in his side and pain meds.  The doctors wouldn’t operate because he had cancer and believed they couldnt help.  He spent 21 days in the hospital, lost 35 pounds and became extremely malnourished.

His doctors back at City of Hope had told my mother that unlike UCSD, they could help her husband. He was trasnfered by ambulance, immediately operated on, was able to go home and begin eating again. My dad then began more rounds of chemo three weeks later. The treatments worked for about a month but then the cancer began to progress, and it became more difficult for him to gain back his weight.

When I saw my father over my spring break, it was the first time I had been home since before his admittance. I didn’t recognize the man picking me up at the airport; he appeared to me as a skeleton with skin on his arms and face. Though, I did recognize that big smile.

I spent the summer at home, where our kitchen became a science lab, filled with medication from around the world. My mom had been doing nonstop research on anything and everything that has worked for other people with cases similar to my dad's. She had him hooked up to IV’s every day and was constantly feeding him remedies that she discovered through reliable sources. My dad was still going to City of Hope for a clinical trial, as well. However, by August 2015, his oncologist stated that the treatment wasn’t working and there was nothing else he could offer him, aside from hospice. They were sending my father home to die.

As of right now, it is safe to say that my family and I are hanging on our last hope. Often times, when treatments approved in the United States cease to work and options become scarce, patients will turn their attention toward other countries with different forms of treatment. We are currently looking at an alternative treatment center in Tiajuana, Mexico with American doctors who will assist my dad in getting his body strong again to continue battling the cancer. However, this treatement will cost approximately $35,000, and we are now in need of any donations available to us. 

My father’s sickness has never been terminal until now; it was always just a bump in the road to a long, healthy life with his wife and kids. This treatment could quite possibly be our last chance of getting him back on track.