Kase’s Krew

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! ❤️