Support Jaiden's Fight Against Cancer

Hi my name is Cindy Jacobs I'm a friend of Katrina. My son is a classmate/friend with Jaiden.

Here is there story. April 24th started just like a normal day. Boys went to school we went to work and it continued for the rest of the day. It came time to unwind for the day. Jaiden happened to get a bloody nose, he was getting them earlier in the week, but just a normal 10-15 minutes. This time it was going on for an hour. I said we need to go in, this isn’t stopping for us. We went into LF ER. They did a nose exam and found he had a pulp in his left nostril. The doctor then called St.Cloud ENT, they suggested to do a CT Scan. We did a CT Scan. They also packed Jaiden’s left nostril with I swear 2.5’ of packing to control the bleeding. Once they received the results back, They found it to be a Juvenile Nasopharyngeal Angiofibroma a vascular benin tumor, the location of it is his nasal cavity, half of his left cheek and all the way up to the dura (right below the brain) as of now it has not gone into the brain. St. Cloud ENT doctor said they have only seen a few of these in their career and insisted we go to Children’s in Minneapolis. Little Falls then contact Children’s and got everything set up for us to go.

We arrived in Minneapolis at 2:30 Friday 4/25 morning at the Emergency Department. Once we got there they did another round of CT Scans. ENT at children’s visited with us that morning. They also believed it to be a Juvenile Nasopharyngeal angiofibroma, a very common thing in young males especially going through puberty. They said it looks to be the size of an orange!!

Later that evening they scheduled Jaiden for a MRI. We were in that little ER room for 20 hours (all the beds were full) until our lovely nurses and ER Doctor pulled their weight to get us out of there. We then transferred to the 8th floor. Saturday morning we again seen the ENT doctor, Dr. Tibizar and his colleagues. They had a plan in place for Jaiden. Removal surgery was set for Wednesday 4/30.

This type of tumor is very vascular and part of removing it would be, he would need to go through an embolism surgery, which just means to cut off the blood supply to the tumor, a day or two days before removal. The only problem was, no one could squeeze him in to do the embolism surgery, finally Dr. Tibizar reached out to his good friend and colleague at United Hospital in St.Paul. He made an opening for Jaiden that Tuesday 4/29. You know what that means Jai got his first ambulance ride! They transferred us over to St.Paul Children’s Hospital that Monday night for the embolism surgery Tuesday morning at St.Paul Children’s Hospital, United and Children’s are actually connected. Everything went well with the embolism surgery. Once Jaiden was through recovery, we went back to Minneapolis Children’s, yes another ambulance ride for him!

Wednesday 4/30 the day of removal surgery. Everything was on schedule, Dr.Tibizar said this surgery could last 6+ hours as to where the tumor was located. They would do it by going through his nostril and the inside of his top lip. Jaiden went down for surgery and we went back to his room. They called about an hour and a half in and said he was doing well and surgery was going good. Well an hour and half later, we didn’t receive a phone call, we were greeted by his doctor in Jaiden’s room. Dr. T had stopped surgery… wow did that go faster than they thought? That’s odd why did he scrub out? Was my first thoughts.

Dr.T then said, I had to make a medical decision based on the best interest of Jaiden…we needed to stop surgery. We biopsied some of the tissue and we believe it has cancer like tendencies… the one word every parent does not want to hear is, CANCER. If you were in that room I think you could’ve heard all our hearts drop to the floor. Doctor T then explained why he needed to stop and that we need to wait for the full biopsy to come back before we continue incase it’s cancer and we need to approach this differently instead of just removing it. Jaiden then came back to the room to recover, he slept most of the day and night. His pain wasn’t to bad, just a lot of swelling.

Thursday 5/1 ENT doctors came in assessed Jaiden said he was recovering well and they don’t see a reason why we couldn’t go home. Pathology could take until the next week to come back and at this point we have been there for seven whole days.

We then were visited with the oncology team. We sat down and talked about the next steps, there was still a chance that they were wrong and it could still be the JNA. I don’t think I have ever prayed that hard in my life to God and especially my dad to please protect my son from this awful C word.

The most challenging thing was how do we tell Jaiden?? How do we tell our 12 year old son he could possibly have cancer….

We were eventually discharged and we could go home! It didn’t pay to stay in the hospital and wait if pathology wasn’t going to come back until that following week. We got back home about 730 Thursday night.

Friday 5/2 in the afternoon my phone rings… Children’s Minneapolis shows up on the caller ID. It’s Dr.Walters part of the oncology team. He says do you guys have a few minutes to talk…

I really hate to give you this news over the phone, but Jaiden does have cancer. We believe it to be Rhabdomyosarcoma, sub-type Alveolar. He then continued to explain what the next steps would be.. treatment will include chemotherapy and radiation. We will need to do additional CT Scans of different areas of his body, along with a PET scans. To know if the cancer has spread to anywhere else in his body.

Wednesday 5/7 we go back down to Children’s where they will install his port for chemo and do some other scans.

Chemo will be done at Minneapolis Children’s and radiation will be done at Mayo Clinic in Rochester.

Chemo will be once a week for 42 weeks with every 3rd week being an overnight stay starting 5/14 and Radiation will be in between that. We head down to Rochester the week of 5/19 for consultations. Jaiden will also need to have labs done every week before treatment.

You hear of families going through this everyday, but never in a million years did I think I would be experiencing this with my child. He has always been healthy.

There are so many unknowns for us, the only thing we know is it is treatable and that we will get through this together!! I just want Jaiden to experience the positive side of things and to know how much support he has around him. Thank you to all the wonderful nurses, doctors, friends and most importantly family members! We appreciate all your kind words and support through this difficult time!

I couldn't imagine going through any of this but he is a strong little man and he has an army behind him to stay strong! Prayers for Jason Katrina Jaiden and Gavin.