My name is Kevin, and I live with my son, daughter in law and three grandchildren. In early September my 9 year old grandson, Kevin “Axel” Rodriguez, started having tooth pain which his dentist thought was caused by an abscessed molar. He was sent to a dental specialist and surgeon, and was given antibiotics and anti-inflammatory medicine. They were also getting the run around from the insurance company. After several weeks with no improvement and missing days of school due to the pain, his father, Christian, told his mother, Rebeca, to take Axel and little brother, Christian (2 years old) down to her parents in Monterrey, Mexico to look for answers. Within four days, advancing from a dentist to a maxillofacial surgeon, to a CT scan, it was finally discovered that the abscess was really a tumor. Then six days after arriving in Mexico, Axel was in the hospital getting a biopsy of the tumor. The next day the parents were sitting down with a pediatric oncologist and were told that it is almost certain that the tumor was malignant. Now, tonight, 12 days after arriving in Monterrey, after getting the lab results back, and after going through full body X-rays, CT scan, and PET scan, they talked with the pediatric oncologist who confirmed it is an aggressive type of bone cancer, specifically High Grade Osteogenic Sarcoma. This is a type of cancer that is extremely rare, affecting only about 500 children in the USA each year. The good news is that, from the full body scans, they can see that it has not yet metastasized to other areas of the body. The initial plan was for Axel to go through 4 initial rounds of chemotherapy, After that he will get surgery from a team of doctors: a cancer surgeon, a plastic surgeon, and a maxillofacial surgeon, to remove the tumor and reconstruct his jaw which is destroyed by the tumor. After surgery they will follow up with 7 more months of chemotherapy. This is a long process, and the family was ready to be separated for up to a year. But when they went in to start chemo we soon found out that additional charges that were added made it nearly impossible to continue paying out of pocket in Mexico. Our next step is to bring Axel back to the Austin metro area and look for treatment using Christian’s insurance. My hope and my prayer is that we can find treatment as soon as possible, and that insurance can cover most of the cost. Axel is one of most social kids I know. He can talk and carry on a conversation with almost anyone. He is always ready to play with his cousins when they come to visit. He loves sports and he played on a soccer team last year. I do worry how these treatments are going to affect his personality. The funds you donate will be used to cover any expenses not covered by insurance. My son has already spent thousands of dollars getting a diagnosis while in Mexico.