Jewel Hofman

Welcome to Jewel's CaringBridge site! We desire this to be a place where we can share the facts of what is currently taking place with Jewel as we begin this long journey ahead of us, but also a place where we can display the Glory of God through our words and your encouragement as well. 


A little backstory of how we got to the place of her being diagnosed with a rare form of Osteosarcoma: 


In late June of 2019, Sara took Jewel to the doctor because she was having a lot of pain and swelling in her ankle. At that appointment, they took X-rays and found that she had a fracture due to what they thought was a bone cyst.  She was put in a boot and we left for our family vacation over the 4th of July.  As soon as we got home from our family vacation, Jewel had an MRI and it was discovered that she had an Aneurysmal Bone Cyst (ABC) which caused the fracture in her leg. She had her 1st surgery on July 16, 2019 to remove the ABC from her lower tibia.  


In October,  X-rays showed her ABC had returned in the same spot.  So, in January of this year, Jewel was referred to Iowa City where they performed a newer less invasive procedure to try and kill the cyst. (This was going to be the first of 3 surgeries using this newer less invasive procedure). The week before what was going to be her 2nd round in Iowa City, Jewel was having more pain again so they did more X-rays and another MRI. Once again, those showed that the ABC had returned, changed, and aggressively gown to where she had only a small sliver of bone left in her lower tibia.  


So, in March, Jewel had another surgery, 5 hours long, in Sioux Falls where they used cadaver bone struts and bone grafting where the cyst had destroyed the bone. The pathology from that surgery, examined at Mayo, finally came back on April 19th.  We got a call on that day from the doctor in Sioux Falls, that the pathology results showed that Jewel had a rare form of Osteosarcoma. 


This leads us to this day and Jewel is getting ready to get her port placed and start a long journey of fighting this cancer. All of her treatment will be done in Iowa City. At this time, Covid-19 is present and that makes navigating this journey all that much trickier.  This is a road that we never thought we would have to travel. It feels like it has been a long road already since last June, but we know that this is just the beginning of something much more difficult.  We know that prayer is a privilege and the best thing anyone could do for us.  We would appreciate all of your prayers for our family during this very difficult time.


We invite you to follow along with us as Jewel and our family navigate this journey called Osteosarcoma.