Well, that wasn’t too bad! :)

Kerissa • October 17, 2013

Thank you, all, for your prayers this morning!!  My lumbar puncture is now behind me!  God is so good!  Everything went extremely well, even better than I was expecting—my pain dr.’s awesome and so funny.  He sees countless patients, yet he still remembers my full name and birth date/year.  I found out today that my birthday is 8 days after his.  You want to know something else funny?  We both have double letters in our first and middle names!

The procedure hardly hurt at all!  Can you believe it?  Maybe it’s because he’s an anesthesiologist (my first spinal tap last year was done by a radiologist, and it was oh so painful)… 

Dr. S drew 5 tubes of cerebrospinal fluid, and he used the smallest needle to decrease the risk of a post-dural puncture headache.  Because the needle was so tiny, the fluid only came out one drop at a time. The flow got slower by the minute, so he asked the nurse to tip the table a little bit.  Not sure when I’ll get results back because one of the labs needed is so specialized—the laboratory told him they’re going to try and figure it out.  Haha!

October prayer request

By Kerissa Lee • October 19, 2025
Dear friends, At the beginning of October, I started taking a new medication for the autoimmune disease. I thought I was tolerating it just fine, but after several days passed, I began experiencing nausea, loss of appetite, weakness all over, and increased pain. 🙁 It’s like I’m experiencing another “mito crash.” I found out that this specific lupus medication affects mitochondria. That is, it causes an overproduction of reactive oxygen species (ROS). This, in turn, causes cell damage and oxidative stress. I sure wish the rheumatologists would have known about this before prescribing. But I have to remember that Mitochondrial DNA Depletion Syndrome is rare, and they’re not “mito experts.” Anyways, the last time I felt like this was back in May.. I’m so grateful to God that I haven’t needed to be hospitalized from this, but at the same time, I’m also sad that this happened at all, especially because I had such a nice stretch of stable health. I’d really appreciate your prayers, that this muscle weakness can resolve soon, and that this increased pain all over will get back to my baseline. Every time I have a “mito crash,” it feels like I’m fighting the flu which always sucks. The pain has been hard to bear. And whenever I’m in the thick of it, it’s difficult to remember that this too will eventually pass. 😢 Pray that I will endure and follow Jesus’ example like this passage from Hebrews 12:1-2– “Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross...” Thank you all so much for praying for me. ❤️

Thank you! (+ a prayer request)

By Kerissa Lee • October 4, 2025
"Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness." James 1:2-3

Praises & Prayer Requests

By Kerissa Lee • September 3, 2025
"The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness." Lamentations 3:22-23