Dear Friends,

We are still out of town but we have an update.
Eddy called the insurance company this morning (Tuesday). He was told they received the request for out-of-network benefits at in-network rates on Monday. It was APPROVED on MONDAY!!!!! We had been told that it would take two weeks! Thank you for praying for us. Our God does indeed hold the hearts of kings in His hands! We have an appointment with Dr. Joseph Cheng at Vanderbilt Hospital on July 1st. I cannot begin to convey how much it means to us that you are upholding us through your prayers. We ask that you pray for wisdom for Dr. Cheng.
(We would love to see God remove the tumor so that Dr. Cheng does not need to.) Please continue to pray that Hannah and all of the Lees will be faithful and thankful in this assignment
from God. We know that he is in control.

We love you all,
Lisa

June 19th - Recap

Bringing you up to speed,

For those of you who are wondering how we got to this point: Last August Hannah started experiencing back pain. She had returned to school early to work in the admissions office and had moved some things out of storage by herself. She was not aware of causing any injury to her back but this stayed in our minds as a possible cause of the pain. While she was home for fall break a physical therapist friend checked her briefly and gave her some stretching exercises to do. During Christmas break our friend evaluated Hannah again and tweaked the exercises toward what appeared to be hyper mobility of the lumbar spine. This is a very common condition in young ladies Hannah’s age. Hannah took a weight training class as a college course beginning in January and her back showed some improvement on and off. However, by spring break the pain was worse and accompanied by upper thigh pain so while she was home for break she went to see her doctor. He ordered X-rays and referred her to a spine doctor. The X-rays showed no problem with her spine so he ordered eight sessions of physical therapy and scheduled a follow-up visit in May. When Hannah came home for the summer, we went back to the spine doctor and he said that we needed an MRI. Hannah was scheduled to be a counselor at Summit Ministries so we asked if she could take a steroid dose pack to get ahead of the inflammation so that the exercises might have a chance to help. He thought that was a reasonable course to pursue. One week later, the pain was much worse in her back and legs. I called the spine doctor to schedule the MRI so that he could read the results before Hannah left for Summit. The pain increased and we were back in his office two days later because I was scared, Hannah was miserable, and I thought she might need to cancel her plans for Summit. The doctor said the leg and back pain was no big deal and perhaps she had a herniated disc but that this type of pain is not uncommon among girls her age. He said that Summit would be great for her and to go ahead and plan to attend and he would see her in one week. He told her to take ibuprofen for the pain which actually did help some. Five days later, the MRI session was very long which made me a bit suspicious but I blew it off. Two days later we went to the spine doctor’s office. He said that he had been dreading telling us the results of the MRI since he read them the day before. The MRI showed what he thinks is a benign tumor at the end of her spinal cord. That was Friday, June 12th and on the 17th we were in the neurosurgeons office. That’s it. Now you know what preceded the June 17th appointment with the neurosurgeon. We covet your continued prayers. We will be out of town attending two family gatherings for the next 7 days. I will update again when we return home.

Lisa

June 17th - Doctor Appointment

Dear Friends,

Thank you so much for your concern for us. We are grateful to you for bearing this trouble with us through your prayers (Nahum 1:7). Hannah is doing well and her back and leg pain is manageable with her medication. She was scheduled to leave today for her job as a counselor with Summit Ministries. She loves this work but the doctor told her that the surgery is urgent. He said that she should stay home so that we can continuously pursue the surgical process.

We met with a neurosurgeon this afternoon. I’ll refer to him as Dr. J. He is thought by our doctors to be the best neurosurgeon in this area. We prepared 6 pages of questions for him because the location of Hannah’s tumor at the base of the spine is somewhat rare and we weren’t sure that he would be experienced with resection of this type of tumor. Dr. J was so gracious and humble. He told us very early on in the appointment that he probably would not perform this surgery. He said that he had done less than one of these per year and we got the impression that he had not performed this surgery on anyone as young as Hannah.

Dr J said that he would like for us to go to Vanderbilt to Dr. Joseph Cheng. Let me tell you why this is amazing then you will know that your prayers on our behalf for guidance were answered.

Eddy and I and others have spent the last two days researching and making contact with lots of people. A number of friends suggested Vanderbilt as the place to have this done. Vanderbilt is out of our insurance network, and that will be a prayer request later in this email. As I was researching, I found Dr. Cheng’s credentials and believed that he had experience in removal of this type of tumor. Today while in the waiting room, we received a call from a doctor’s office in Utah, recommending…… Dr. Cheng. When we got home from the appointment, Eddy received an email from a friend who knew of a very complicated tumor removal performed by …….Dr. Cheng.

Dr. J knows Dr. Cheng personally and agrees with his philosophy of neurosurgery, which is “you don’t sacrifice nerves in order to gain total resection of a tumor.” (That is also our philosophy of neurosurgery. ;) If a portion of the tumor is left, it may grow back. Either way, Hannah will have to be followed medically for this condition for the rest of her life.

The neurosurgeon said that he will write a letter to our insurance company referring us to Dr. Cheng. Here is the much needed prayer request. Our insurance coverage is such that we can go to Vanderbilt ONLY as an out-of-network hospital. We will have some coverage, but it will probably cover less than half of the expense.

Will you please continue to pray for us?

1) That our insurance company will be persuaded to cover this as though it is in network. Proverbs 21:1

2) That Hannah & the rest of the Lees will be wise stewards of this trial and this process, bringing honor to Him whom we love. Matthew 25:21; James 1:2-4

3) For Dr. J’s son who needs a liver transplant. Eddy told Dr. J about our faith and about all of you who are praying for us. I plan to send Dr. J a thank-you card and let him know that we are praying for his son.

Thanks again,

Lisa, for all the Lees

Background

Hi, this is Nathanael, Hannah's brother.

You may know that my sister has had back pain for about a year. Recently, she had an MRI done and the doctors found what appears to be a mass inside her spinal column. It is just below the spinal cord. What we know is that it will have to be removed. This will involve back surgery. We suspect that it is a particular type of tumor that is rarely malignant. However, this and most other details remain unknown at this time.

Our family will be asking for your prayers. During this time I'm going to be taking care of updating people over the next several weeks. There are a few ways to keep up with the details.

#1 Twitter
I would recommend Twitter. Follow "Hannahsback" on twitter.com. You will get real time updates and be notified when this blog is updated.

#2 Facebook
If you don't twitter and don't want to you might want to try Facebook. Add "Hannahs Back" as a friend to get the same information, real time updates and notification if this blog updates. You can even add the Facebook mobile application and get the updates sent to your phone. If you don't know anything about Facebook and Twitter and don't want to...

#3 Website
Just type in the website www.twitter.com/hannahsback. Yes, this is the twitter site but you don't need to know anything about twitter to use it. Just read updates when you're at the site. All of them are time stamped and you can click on any links you see. If this blog is updated there will be a link on the site. So check www.twitter.com/hannahsback for all the updates. Don't worry, if there is anything posted here there will be a post and a link on the twitter site directing you back here.