Kaden Spencer, a Battle Ground teen, saw his senior year turned upside down following a brain cancer diagnosis that has resulted in him staying at the St. Jude Children’s Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee.
Early in August, Spencer began experiencing headaches and constantly feeling dizzy, leading his mother, Dawn Rasmussen, to make an appointment with his doctor. During the appointment, their doctor decided to schedule an MRI.
“Thank God we went in for the MRI,” Rasmussen said. “That night we got a phone call saying to get him up to OHSU (Oregon Health and Science University), he has a tumor. And so we went up there, and then they transferred us over to the Sunnyside Hospital, and the next night he was having brain surgery.”
Spencer was diagnosed with medulloblastoma, an aggressive form of brain cancer that occurs on the lower left side of the brain. The diagnosis and required treatment will force Spencer to miss out on his senior year of high school.
“It breaks my heart,” Rasmussen said.
After finding out what his diagnosis was, Rasmussen began doing her own research and discovered that a local oncologist wanted Spencer to undergo the improper type of radiation treatment. She emailed a letter to Dr. Amar Gajjar, a top brain cancer specialist at the St. Jude Children’s Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, for a second opinion.
“From my research, I knew he needed proton [therapy] and so I emailed Doctor Gujjar, and he called me the very next day,” Rasmussen said.
Rasmussen said she is incredibly thankful for the support that St. Jude’s has provided.
“You see the commercials on TV and you hear about it, but you don’t realize just how amazing they are until you go there,” she said. “They make everything as stress free as they possibly can, and we have a two-bedroom apartment there.”
Rasmussen and Spencer recently returned to Battle Ground after his first stint of radiation treatment, with another eight-month stay in Memphis for further treatment on the horizon. Rasmussen has organized a dinner and auction fundraiser at 6 p.m. Friday, Nov. 15, to help with expenses. They will return to the St. Jude Children’s Hospital in Memphis on Dec. 2.
The cancer treatment schedule and relocation forced Rasmussen to take an extended leave of absence from her work.
“I’m a single mom, so it makes it even harder … I still have my rent I pay down here and my storage unit and everything else,” she said. “So it’s been rough in that way.”
The money raised from the Nov. 15 fundraiser will assist Rasmussen with everyday expenses, she said, adding that the medical costs at St. Jude’s are covered, but anything they do outside of St. Jude’s and her bills back home in Battle Ground will pay for the funds raised.
The fundraiser will take place at the Cloverlane Event Center, 16391 NE 182nd Ave., Brush Prairie, with a cost of $25 per person and table sponsors available for $175 total for eight attendees. Dinner will be catered by Famous Dave’s Barbecue with live entertainment by “Pure Country.”
Tickets are available at ticketleap.events/tickets/krusade-for-kaden. Donations can also be made through their gofund me at gofund.me/6e9137ee.
