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