Kolton’s Story

Site created on February 23, 2022

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.
I have sat down to write this a few times now.  It doesn’t get any easier.  Kolton has been having a great Senior year at Mankato Loyola.  He has grown so much.  The next challenge he faces will be the biggest challenge of his life.

     On Feb. 15 Kolton received some devastating news.  Kolton was diagnosed with cancer.  The cancer that he has is a very rare and challenging cancer to treat although it is treatable and he will beat it.  It is called Ewing’s Sarcoma.  There are only a couple hundred cases a year in the entire United States.  The treatment for it is very aggressive.  He starts with Chemo. Kolton will have to be hospitalized while he gets the chemo treatment.  He will come home and continue to go to school between treatments.  He has treatment for 2 days one week then 1 day the next week and then 5 days the next week and that rotates for 12 weeks.  He will then have surgery to reconstruct his jaw.  It is basically the same surgery that Shawn had 8 years ago.  Then he will have another 17 weeks of chemo to finish the treatment.  His cancer is completely different than what Shawn had but it just happens to be in the same area.   It is localized and has not spread anywhere else.  

The doctors and staff at Mayo have been amazing and caring towards Kolton and us.  This is gonna be a long haul for Kolton and the family but we will all make it through and be a stronger family in the end.  We can’t wait until he graduates this year and goes on to play college basketball at Ridgewater College.  We have a lot to look forward to once this battle is over.  We will update the journal as this journey progresses and thank you to everyone that has helped and will help us through these challenging times.



Newest Update

Journal entry by Shawn Kunz

After a long day of tests and scans yesterday in Rochester we had a  visit with Kolton's Doctor this morning.  We received excellent news.  The radiation did its job and the tumor is basically gone and there is no sign of cancer anywhere in his body.  Kolton will still continue with chemo until his next set of scans in July.  If those scans come back clear then he will be able to stop chemo and get back to a normal life again.  Kolton is spending time at home and Willmar.  He has really gotten into a schedule of getting up early and working out everyday.  He said he feels good but is ready to be done with the chemo.  July is just around the corner and then hopefully we can put the treatment portion of this behind us.  He will still need to go back for scans every 3 months for a couple years but he is on the right track to recovery and get on with a normal life of a 20 year old.   We want to thank everyone for the thought, prayers and well wishes.  Have a great week and enjoy the nice weather

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