Casey Porisch

Welcome to our CaringBridge website. We are using it to keep family and friends updated in one place. We appreciate your support and words of hope and encouragement. Thank you for visiting.


For everyone's benefit, here's a little background on Casey's situation.


On Saturday, August 27th, Casey was out to eat at a local restaurant, and had to go to the bathroom.  Daddy took him and realized that there was something a little off.  Casey's urine was almost all blood.  


He was taken to Urgent Care, and at the time the Dr. thought he just had a bladder infection, and gave him some antibiotics to hopefully clear it up.  The following Wednesday, Daddy realized that it wasn't getting any better, and took him back to the Dr.  At that time, he was sent to Children's Hospital in Minneapolis for further testing.


After some initial tests were performed, it was identified that Casey had a tumor in his bladder.  Further testing revealed that this tumor was significant in size, and was cancerous.  To put things in perspective, his normal bladder should be about the size of a "Cutie" clementine.  The tumor inside of his bladder isabout the size of a Grapefruit.  These aren't exact measurements, but they provide a good visual.  The medical term for the type of cancer that Casey has is called Embryonal Rhabdomyosarcoma.  It's a very fast growing tumor, but the expectations are that it is also very treatable and reacts well to treatment.


The treatment plan established by the great medical team at Children's Hospital at this point involves Casey starting chemotherapy ASAP, with the expectation that it may take up to a year to complete.  This type of tumor historically has been very receptive to treatment via chemotherapy, and in many cases can recede almost as quickly as it came.


Once the tumor has been reduced to an acceptable size, the Dr's can operate and remove it.  As it stands right now, they can't operate due to it's large size.  They will need it shrunk to a point that they can successfully remove the tumor while still being able to leave a sufficient amount of his bladder to allow it to operate as designed.


We thank you in advance for all of the calls, texts, notes, emails, thoughts, and most importantly prayers.  We are so grateful to everyone, so appreciative of the offers of help and assistance, and can't put into words how much this means to us.


Please feel free to follow along as we follow Casey through his new journey.  We all know he's the ultimate charmer, and has such a positive attitude.  With everyone's support and this incredible medical staff, we know we will make it through this!