Jason Park Recovery Fund

More than a year and a half ago, one of Jason Park's routine MRIs showed lesions in his brain that doctors couldn't explain. Given his history of brain cancer, this was particularly concerning. With the lesions being too small and close to dangerous areas to perform a biopsy, Jason and his wife Camille had to accept nearly monthly MRI appointments to monitor change and growth. It seemed increasingly likely that these lesions heralded the onset of MS, or even worse, inoperable cancer. The lesions have slowly grown, but still defied easy explanation, diagnosis, or consensus between the specialists that the Parks saw ever more frequently.

During this entire period, Jason has struggled with increasing symptoms for his mystery illness - nausea, increasingly poor eyesight, lack of energy, sudden severe and sustained weight loss, and more. From hospitals to doctor's offices and back again, Jason and Camille have struggled through tests, treatments, and uncertainty as they have fought to understand what's going on in Jason's brain and how it's affecting the rest of his body. 

In mid-April, Jason underwent a brain biopsy. The growths were finally large enough to make the brain surgery just safe enough to attempt. The biopsy went better than we could have hoped, but still has a long and tiring recovery period (up to 3 months). Jason has been doing well with the recovery, thankfully.

After the labs ran tests on the biopsy material, Jason and Camille were given a diagnosis of a brain cancer called germinoma. This is good news and bad news - germinoma has a higher treatment success rate than glioma-type brain cancers. However, his diagnosis is really surprising, because this is the same type of cancer that Jason had 13 years ago, which is not supposed to reoccur. The fact that it has means that this tumor is now considered a treatment-resistant cancer, making it quite a bit more complicated. Jason's doctors from Swedish, UW Medicine, and the tumor board have compared notes and more or less agreed upon a treatment plan, but they have asked for an independent evaluation to confirm the diagnosis because Jason's case is so rare and the presentation is unusual. 

The initial recommendation was that Jason should start treatment three to four weeks after the diagnosis, but trying to coordinate between specialists, having the insurance deny coverage for visits and treatments that their own doctors recommended, and the sheer novelty of his case keep on causing delays that are very frustrating with this type of diagnosis. 


This process and the treatment that is scheduled continue to eat away at the Park family's peace of mind, their time as a family, their ability to continue to provide for their children, and their savings. Until very recently, both Jason and Camille were at least partially self-employed, so time off and sick leave have been mostly covered out of their savings, which can get expensive pretty quickly with multiple medical appointments weekly and longer periods of recovery, not to mention needing to manage regular expenses.

UPDATE: Jason is finally set for his chemo treatments, but the severity of the chemo regimen he will be on means that he won't be able to work for at least the next nine months. We've updated our GoFundMe balance to reflect the needs that the Park family has for assistance with treatment-related costs and income replacement while we continue to pursue additional avenues for long-term possibilities.

We are asking for your help raising funds to assist Jason and Camille with medical expenses, transportation costs, and lost income while they spend time with doctors and in the hospital over the next several months as they seek answers.

For updates on Jason's journey, and other ways to help, you can also visit the Park Family CaringBridge site .