Kase’s Krew

12/30/2025

Time for an update on Kase.

First of we want to share all of the good news. Since Kase recovered from his surgery we have had a sense of normalcy we haven't had since this all began. Kase has been back in school, he's had friends over to play, he's been gaming as always. He's been happy and healthy all things considered.

We were gifted an absolutely wonderful experience from Tanganyika Wildlife park in Kansas where we were able to do meet and greets with some of Kase's favorite animals, including capybaras, penguins, and they even surprised us by letting us meet the baby hippo Mars, and feed and pet a rhino! It was incredible and we are so thankful for the opportunity.

We had a wonderful thanksgiving with all our family. And we had an amazing Christmas where the kids got absolutely spoiled rotten! We are thankful for all the support we have received this year, without it we would not have been able to make the memories we have and that is something we cannot thank everyone enough for.

Now we have an update on Kase's health. And unfortunately, it's not the update we want to share. On the 28th Kase started experiencing some numbness on the right side of his body. We took him into the ER in Kearney to have him evaluated, and they did an MRI. The MRI did show that there was regrowth, and swelling so they started him on a steroid and sent him home while we waited for our team in Omaha to review the scans. Yesterday we got a call that the tumor came back in the original location very quickly and very aggressively. It is already larger than his original tumor was. And not only that but it has also spread to multiple other locations in his brain. Due to the spread, it has now become inoperable and there is nothing more they can do for him. As of now the steroid has reduced the swelling and the numbness has resolved, and he is for the most part symptom free and happy. We will go to Omaha next Tuesday to have him evaluated one more time, and Jack and I will then meet with the palliative care team to help us get set up with hospice so we can keep him at home where he will hopefully be more comfortable. They can't give us a definitive timeline, but due to how aggressively it came back and the fact that there is now multiple tumors they are guessing between a few weeks and a couple months.

This is obviously devastating news for our family. And we absolutely understand that people want to support us and have a chance to see Kase. However, Jack and I do request that you let us spend this time together as a family. We do not want to offend anyone or come off rude, we absolutely could not have survived this long or be able to now consider Jack staying home with us during this time without the support we have received. But Kase is only 9, he understands as well as a child his age can, but we have not told him the severity of this last update. We do not want to scare him more than necessary. We are afraid if people start to flood in to visit him he will start to get concerned. So we hope everyone understands that we are just trying to protect him and our time as a family right now. And we kindly ask if you happen to see us out and about that nothing is mentioned to Kase and everything is as normal as possible. Again, we cannot thank everyone enough for the way you have surrounded us with love and support this past year. The toys and gifts for the kids have helped keep a smile on their faces during the hard times, the experiences we have been gifted helped create lasting memories, and the financial support not only helped us with bills while Jack had missed so much work, but has also given us the chance to take vacations and make so many other memories.

We will try to keep everyone updated as time goes on as best as we can.

11/24/2025

It has been such a long time since we have posted an update! Last we updated Kase had just been released from the hospital. Since then he has been doing great! He had a couple of weeks of some headaches and a slower than normal recovery but since then he has been doing amazing!

He has gone back to school, still has some activity restrictions but is otherwise back to his normal day to day routine. We had a wonderful Halloween, where he and his sister got wayyyy too much candy. Kase was a puffin this year and Whitney was a fire girl. They both also had a blast carving pumpkins, and Kase was especially proud of his among us pumpkin!!

He had a rapid MRI about a week ago to check and make sure everything is healing ok and looking good and it all looked great!!
He will have his next MRI in January.

The biggest news we have since our last update is the kids both got baptized today! Jack and I decided early on that when it came to the kids' faith it would be their choice. So we waited until they were old enough to decide for themselves and after attending an after school church program for the last couple years they both decided they wanted to be baptized. And they both are SO happy about it!!

Otherwise, life has regained as much normalcy as we get these days! Kase will restart his medications sometime this week and we will keep taking it day by day! As always, we thank everyone for all their love and support!

10/13/2025

We are breaking out of the hospital today! Kase’s surgery went well, they were able to remove the tumor again which is great! His recovery has been much slower this time around and he has been in quite a bit of pain. We are finally starting to get a hold on the pain now. He is having some struggle with his coordination on his right hand and struggling with getting the right words out at times. But both those things are slowly improving. He also lost some peripheral vision on his right side. We won’t know how much until he heals and we can do a vision test but they don’t expect it to be much of an issue since he is so young his brain will just learn to work around it.

Otherwise, not much to note. We are going to stay in Kearney for a couple days just to make sure everything is still going well before we head all he way home. But with all the extra time we were in the hospital this time we got his new shirts finished up and they are now available to order! Kase helped us design these shirts. The phrase on the back is a combination of his two favorite phrases that bring him comfort during this fight. And the new Kase’s Krew mascot is a picture of our dog that we unexpectedly lost earlier this year. I did draw it myself, and I am by no means an artist but it’s just silly enough to be cute we decided and Kase loves it. We tried to give everybody as many options as we could so hopefully there is something for everyone!

*little disclaimer, I have not ordered any of these for ourselves yet so I can’t speak to how well the design shows up on certain colors that we have chosen. So make sure you look at the front and back for your chosen color before you order to make sure you’re comfortable with how it looks!

Help Kase Kick Cancers Butt!. Kase is a 9 year old boy battling brain cancer. Up to this point he has undergone 3 brain surgeries and 2 rounds of radiation and continues...

09/30/2025

✨Update on Kase✨

It’s taken me a couple weeks to be able to put the words together for and update but here we go.

Kase had a check up a couple weeks ago. This included a variety of tests but the most important being an updated MRI. The evening after we had the MRI done we stayed in Omaha. I was awoken in the middle of the night by back to back phone calls from and unknown number. That’s never a good sign. The resident on call that night had seen his scans and called us to let us know Kase had a brain bleed and needed to be brought back to the hospital right away. So we woke him up, packed up, and headed back. Just to spend the evening and most of the next day wondering what was happening. Turns out the resident read the scans wrong and Kase didn’t have a brain bleed and was not in any immediate danger, thank god!

What the resident was seeing was unfortunately another reoccurrence however. Kase’s counts weren’t good enough to consider surgery at that time though. So we were sent home. We’ve stopped all his medications again, and have been watching and waiting for his counts to recover. He is scheduled for surgery on the 8th assuming his counts recover in time.

So what should have been a routine visit turned into a nightmare and now our sweet, amazing, caring, loving boy has to have a 3rd brain surgery.

We would appreciate all the prayers and positive thoughts you can send our way. It’s been a rough couple weeks.

Also, Kase wanted to make new Kase’s Krew shirts that he helped design. I will be working on getting those finished up and linked soon! So be on the lookout for those!

09/12/2025

💛Childhood Cancer Awarness Month💛

September is childhood cancer awareness month, which has turned out to be a much harder month for me than I expected with the constant reminders everywhere I look. And while that is amazing that so many people are bringing awareness to it, it is also a hard pill to swallow, because if you look deeper, it is almost entirely families that have been effected by it. I was just like everyone else before our life took a turn. I didn’t like to think about it, didn’t help raise awareness, I just moved on with my life when I would see things about it. It was heartbreaking but it wasn’t happening to us, it didn’t affect us. Until it did. So believe me I get it, I don’t get upset when don’t see friends or family raising awareness, I don’t hold it against them. It’s not something you want to think about. But I wasn’t a cancer parent either, until I was. And now I sit here and can’t help but think, what if every one cared, even if only for this month, what if everyone fought to help these kids? What if everything turned gold during September the way October turns pink? There are stores, and sports teams, police departments, even the White House that goes pink during October. Why don’t they go gold for the children?

4%…. That’s it, 4% is the amount of the federal funding that goes towards pediatric cancer research. Most kids don’t have treatment options that were made for them, they have treatment options that are decades old and were created for adults! And without funding this isn’t going to change. Without more people caring, for even 1 month a year, this isn’t going to change.

Cancer is the #1 cause of death by disease in children. 1 in 285 children will be diagnosed with cancer before their 20th birthday. And 1 in 6 of those kids wont survive. The ones that do survive? 95% of them will have significant health issues by the time they are 45. No one survives this battle unharmed.

Cancer is a thief. It steals their happiness, it steals parents sense of security, It steals time, It steals attention from siblings.

IT STEALS LIVES!!!!

That alone should make you sick to your stomach, that alone should make you want to fight for them! We can make a change! But we have to work together! So next time you see a post about childhood cancer, consider sharing it. Next time you see a fundraiser or a rally, consider sharing it. Raising awareness doesn’t have to cost you a dime. It just takes a second of your time. But if you don’t, like I said, I won’t hold it against you. I will still be here raising awareness and fighting for change.

If you have stuck with me this long, here is an update on Kase. We have been back home now for a month. He has started his new medicine and seems to be doing really well with it. Both Kase and Whitney are very happy to be back in school and have a sense of normalcy. We have to go back to Omaha next week for some tests. We have to make sure his body is tolerating the new medicine and it isn’t causing any problems, he will also have a new MRI done. This will be the first real MRI since his second surgery, so please send us all your thoughts and prayers for a good outcome.

Overall, there isn’t much to update on, Kase has been doing really well and we are all just very happy to be home. However, I do want to touch base on one thing I haven’t said much about. It’s not a subject I particularly like to talk about, but we have gotten some questions recently about prognosis, and a few people express to us how happy they are that he made it through this.

While Kase is doing really well and other than some missing hair, does appear to be a “normal” child. His diagnosis of Glioblastoma is a terminal diagnosis. This diagnosis comes with an average survival range of 12-18 months. No one has ever beaten this disease. That being said, there are a few people who have survived 20+ years with the disease. He is not a statistic and we hope and pray everyday to have many many more years with him. But at the end of the day this disease will take him from us. I don’t like to be this blunt. It is hard to acknowledge it. But I felt like i have accidentally led people to believe he has beaten this, and while I would give anything for that to be the case, it isn’t. So we would appreciate all your prayers and good vibes moving forward. Pray that this disease doesn’t progress and he gets to be a kid for a while longer. Pray that he stays relatively unsymptomatic. Pray that he gets to stay. And please help raise awareness, because if science moves fast enough, you never know when they might find the thing that could save him.

Now after all that heaviness, I realize I never posted the video of Kase ringing the bell for completing his second round of radiation. So enjoy!!!

08/28/2025

🌟🌟 ONE YEAR 🌟🌟

It has officially been a whole year since our life turned upside down forever. One year, 2 brain surgeries, 13 weeks of radiation, tons of new medications, scans, and pokes. But most of all one year of Kase being the absolute strongest kid I know, one year of still making the most of everyday, and a year of still keeping a smile on his face (most days).

We simply cannot explain the last year of our lives in a way anyone can fully understand. It has been overwhelming and terrifying, but it has also been amazing and beautiful. Seeing the way everyone in our community has come together to support us is mindblowing. Learning to make the most of every single day, absolutely amazing. And seeing the way an 8, now 9 year old boy has handled this, there just aren’t words to properly explain it.

Kase is a part of a program thru the hospital called beads of courage. This program gives the kids a bead for each thing they have to go through. Every bead represents a specific thing they have gone through. For example, black beads are pokes of any kind, blood draw, iv start, finger pokes. Red beads are for when he receives blood products, specialty beads for bigger occasions. It is a fun way for Kase to be able to see how much he has overcome and a visual representation of his bravery. As of today Kase has 366 beads. Which is an insane amount of things for a one year time frame.

So to celebrate the year, and in the spirit of making the most of everyday. We played hooky today. We spent the day together as a family. We started the day with donuts, then we did lots of fishing, Kase caught 5 fish and Whitney caught 4! We watched a movie, played at the park and did a little photoshoot. It was an amazing day, and a day we just needed to be together.

08/06/2025

We are officially down to our last 6 radiation treatments!! Kase has still been handling it all really well! He gets tired a little easier but still has plenty of energy over all! His lab work has been looking great! His platelet count has even gone up so we haven’t had to get any transfusions in a couple months!

Not a ton has happened in the last few weeks. Kase was on an anti seizure medication after his last surgery and we tried to take him off of it but within a couple days his arm started not acting quite right again. So although we caught it early and it didn’t ever progress to another focal seizure his team restarted the medication and set us up with an appointment with neurology. We had that appointment last week and they have decided to keep him on the medication for a year and we can reassess at that point if we want to try to come off of it again. He handles the medication well with the only side effect being some impulse control issues, but he is starting to figure out how to manage that as well. We were also given a rescue medication in case he does have seizures while still on the medication. Neurology also is going to have him get an EEG done to get an idea of how prone he is to have seizures and if he has any triggers he should avoid, he will have that done on Monday.

Kase has also been experiencing some back pain and foot pain. The foot pain we think we are finally starting to figure out and have bought him some special orthopedic shoes which seem to be helping. The back pain seems to be getting better as well, slowly. He took a fall off his hover board in June and that may be all it is. But with the pain lingering he is going to have a spine MRI tomorrow evening to check and make sure it isn’t anything malicious.

Other than that we are just hanging in for our last week in Omaha! His final radiation was scheduled for August 14th, however, that happens to be the first day of school! So we have moved his last day to the 18th and we will come home on the 13th so the kids can enjoy the first couple days of school! We will then just drive back for his final dose and then he’s back home!

We have still been making the most of our summer and we appreciate all the wonderful ideas on activities! We have continued to make frequent trips to the zoo, and mommom and papa got to come down this weekend and see all their favorite animals too! We were gifted a day at the Loritzen gardens and it was absolutely amazing! We are so thankful!! We have also been to the kids museum, the air and space museum, Luminarium, Whitney got to do soccer camp, and we made it back to Kearney for a weekend where the kids great grandparents took them out for cruise night! We have managed to pack so much fun into this summer and we aren’t done yet! Thank you for all the thought and prayers!!

I almost forgot, Kase and Whitney also participated in a photo shoot last time we were here and they ended up in a magazine for an ad for the the Ronald McDonald House! They think that is pretty cool!

07/16/2025

We are now in week 3 here in Omaha. So far everything has been going really well! Kase has had no symptoms from radiation, his platelets have dropped some. Not bad enough to need a transfusion but we are keeping an eye on it with his weekly lab draw!

So far we have had a lot of zoo days! We have now officially seen everything there is to see there! So we are now looking for some recommendations to keep us busy while we are here! We have a zoo membership and a luminarium membership as well! So please send any other suggestions our way! As well as any favorite pools in the area!!

This last weekend Jack was able to come and spend the weekend with us. So we of course made sure daddy could see everything at the zoo as well! We even did the skyfari! Which surprisingly both the kids LOVED!!!

We really don’t have much new information and as long as everything continues to go well we should be able to enjoy our summer here in Omaha.

That being said, the kids are both missing their friends, if any of their friends would like to write them letters let me know and I can send you our mailing address while we are here! The kids also both have messenger kids, and as embarrassing as it is to admit, they both have cell phones as well (this has been important to keep in contact with everyone while we are separated often) but that is also an option for communication as well!!

As always thank you for all the thoughts and prayers everyone is continuing to send our way! ❤️

07/01/2025

*Update on Kase*

Kase is almost completely healed from surgery now! This last weekend we took a quick family vacation to South Dakota to see Mount Rushmore which is one of the things Kase had on his summer wish list! He also got to see mountains in the black hills, and we stayed in a camper during our vacation which are also things he had wanted to do this summer! We had an absolutely wonderful trip that we were able to pack so much fun into! Mount Rushmore, Crazy Horse, a gold mine, and Cosmos mystery area were all so much fun to experience! We were able to stay in a remote area outside Custer state park so every drive we took to and from locations were full of beautiful views and lots of wildlife! The kids are already asking if we can go back soon!

We are now back in Omaha for the next roughly 7 weeks. Kase’s pathology has come back as a recurrence and he started a second round of radiation yesterday. Jack is not able to stay with us for the whole trip this time around but has worked out a plan to be able to have long weekends so we can at least still have weekends together as a family!

Overall Kase is still doing really well considering everything. Obviously, this was not how we wanted to be spending our summer vacation. But he is still in good spirits. He is very upset about not getting to spend time at the pool with friends this year, and he will miss the first day of school this year, but we have agreed that there is lots of fun to be had in Omaha as well! He even got to bring his whole gaming computer with him so he is set!

We have an appointment with his oncology team next week again and will probably discuss more about the plan after radiation. He will not be restarting chemo, but we are instead looking at doing targeted therapy to target specific mutations within the tumor itself. He will not start this until after radiation is complete, so we still have some time to get everything all figured out and a plan in place. We haven’t gotten an official new MRI yet, he did have to have one for the planning stage of radiation, which did still show areas that were enhancing. But he was not completely healed from surgery and blood product can take time to reabsorb. So we still have no real answers as to if they got it all for sure or not. But we are hopeful that they did and the next MRI will show it resolved!

Enjoy some photos from our vacation and we will update when we know more!!

06/21/2025

Just more photos from the past year!!

06/21/2025

Happy happy birthday to our 9 year old boy!!!!!! This has been one heck of a year, something no child should ever have to go through. But our boy has done it with such strength. We love you so so very much Kase!! Here’s to another year of kicking butt!!!! 💛💛💛💛

06/10/2025

*Update on Kase*

First off I’d like to apologize for it taking so long for us to make an update post! We made it home and have just been trying to relax and heal and process as a family.

Kase has been doing great after surgery! Initially after surgery he had more pain than last time, however, that only lasted for about a day and he has been great since! His incision actually looks better than last surgery and is less tender! After surgery he did have some weakness in his right hand, which they expected given the location and swelling that he had. Since we have been home we have been working with him to make sure he is still using the hand and working it and he has regained his strength and coordination with it!! Over all he is just recovering from the surgery like a champ!!

The game plan moving forward is still up in the air. As of now we don’t have final pathology results. Our team has told us that it is most likely a recurrence of his original tumor, just in a slightly different location this time. We are still waiting on the final results to know for sure though.

We don’t know what our plan is as far as treatment moving forward. As of now we just know we will not be restarting chemo. It was too much for his body to handle, and if this is a recurrence then it wasn’t working anyways. We may have to do more radiation, still unsure on that as well. We will meet with our radiologist on Thursday to hear her opinion and her plan. We will then have a follow up with neurosurgery and oncology next Monday. Hopefully in the next couple weeks we will finally get answers and a game plan figured out.

One important bit of information from the surgery. The MRI after surgery did show one area in the surgical cavity that still enhanced with contrast. This could just be caused from some bleeding that occurred during surgery. However, there is also a chance that is could be residual tumor still left behind. Our surgeon does want to lean more towards it being blood, he said that from what he could visibly see during surgery it looked like a full resection again. However, the area that is enhancing is right along the motor strip and is the one area he couldn’t be as aggressive as he would have wanted to be without causing permanent defects in Kases’ movements. Unfortunately, we wont know for sure until his next MRI, which as of now has not been scheduled but I am hoping we get a date for that figured out at our follow-up as well.

So for now we are in possibly the worst chunk of time. The waiting….. waiting for results, waiting on a game plan, waiting to see if its actually even gone, and waiting to be cleared to do all the summer fun activities Kase has wanted to do so badly!! So as always, we appreciate all the thoughts and prayers and if you wouldn’t mind sending up a few extra that the scan is just showing blood we would appreciate it!! We will update when we know more!!!