Jason's first treatment went good yesterday. He felt fine the entire ride back to my mom and dad's house--an 11 hour drive. We arrived at there house around midnight and we will head back home today. I cannot wait to hold my babies--it's been over 5 days since we have seen Taylor and Easton and I am missing them. I will be driving once again as the doctors have made a recommendation that Jason not drive for the time being. They feel that with the increased swelling in his brain that it would be best to not drive until he is able to take the neuropsychological testing with the driving component to be sure that all is safe. With Jason's new treatment, the doctors anticipate the swelling to be reduced by his next MRI. We are going to schedule the neuropsych. testing for his Sept. 22nd trip to Duke.

I started getting the plans underway for Jason's next 2 trips back to Duke. His next treatment is scheduled for Sept. 2nd and we already have 2 free tickets for that trip--Praise God. Southwest Airlines donates tickets to Duke and patients are allowed to receive 1 set of tickets a year--one for the patient and one for the caregiver. Most likely, Jason's father will be going on that trip with him so that I can be home with Taylor and Easton for their first days of school. Taylor starts kindergarten and Easton starts preschool.

Jason's next clinic and treatment appointments are at Duke on Sept. 22nd. He will be having another MRI done in Midland prior to that appt. and we will bring it along with us for the doctors to review. The doctors are expecting changes to be seen with that MRI. They have seen good results with combining both the chemo drug and the Avastin drug.

Many of you may be wondering why Jason is going to Duke for his treatments. I explained a little bit in our last entry that the drug Avastin is not a FDA approved drug for brain cancer as of right now and our insurance may not cover the drug expense--a whopping $20,000 per dose! As you can see, that amount of money will add up extremely fast with Jason getting a dose every 3 weeks. We are working closely with our social workers at Duke to get this drug approved by our insurance company. If our insurance doesn't cover the expenses, Duke is large enough to absorb the cost while we are getting approved for a patient participate program where the company that the drug is made at will actually cover the cost for the patient as long as the patient's income does not exceed a certain amount. So Jason and I feel much more comfortable receiving his treatments at Duke knowing this information. If our insurance company does cover the drug then he will continue receiving his treatments in Midland. Please pray that our insurance company would see that this treatment is a necessary treatment for Jason as many of the other options that are approved by the FDA are not an option for Jason. Surgery is out of the question, he's already had the full amount of radiation that he can have, and the standard treatment of the chemotherapy Temodar was not working as the tumor is progressing now. We are praying that the insurance company will see that this is the best thing for Jason's health and that they will cover the drug.

I know that many of you would like to help in some way either through hotel points, airline miles, gas cards, etc. and we are grateful for all of you wonderful people. If this is something that you would like to offer please email me at joslynkrenzke@hotmail.com so that I may create a list of people that we can call upon if we indeed need to go to Duke every 3 weeks.

Thank you so much for all of your love, prayers, and offers to help. We feel very loved and that makes times like these much easier to handle. Jason and Joslyn