Praises & Prayer Requests

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

Dear friends,

These last several months, I’ve been working hard every day, making sure my Pain With Purpose shop is ready to be officially opened. Not only have I been creating art daily for new notecard, bookmark, and magnet designs, but I’m also using an e-commerce site that’s different than Etsy because Etsy sadly has so many fees.. It’s taken a lot of time learning the ins and outs of the new site on top of listing every single item with its description, picture, quantity, and weight—my mind is blown by how much is involved! Definitely makes me appreciate small shops even more. ❤️

I’ve also sadly had to deal with numerous challenges from my supplier who prints the notecards. They did an amazing job in the past, but for some reason, the quality of their printing started showing issues, so I’ve been on the phone countless times to get those resolved.

All that to say, I’m so excited to share that, Lord willing, my store will finally be opening at the end of September. 😍 I hope you’re excited like I am!

Now for the good and not-so-good medical update..

A few months ago, I shared that my doctors wanted me to try a new/safer pain medication. Well, it has really helped my leg pain (which is wonderful!), but at the same time, it’s also been causing the unfortunate side effect of insomnia. 😞 When I was taking a higher dose of this new medication, I wasn’t falling asleep until after 6-7 AM. So I decreased the med, and I now fall asleep between 3-4 AM which has still been so hard. I’m exhausted every day from only getting about 6 hrs of sleep per night—it would be ideal to obtain at least 9 hrs of sleep since my body has such a significant mitochondrial depletion.. I have an appointment with my sleep dr. at the end of September to figure out what to do, and in the meantime, I’m trying to adjust different meds or add other natural sleep aids, but it continues to be rough. 😢

In other news, I’ve shared this many times throughout the past decade, but due to having hypermobile/loose joints from Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome Type 3, I tore my left hip labrum in 2016 and had it surgically repaired that same year. I then tore my right hip labrum in 2018 and had it surgically repaired. Well, I re-tore my right hip labrum in 2021, but sadly, I never had the chance to get it repaired because of so much going on mitochondrial-wise.. I wrote in a previous post that I started experiencing left hip pain and pain behind my hip 3 months ago. I had yet another MRI arthrogram where the radiologist injects dye into the joint. I’m sad to say that the results are not good. There’s a degenerative hip labral tear from the posterior 11:00 position to the anterior 2:00 position which means it’s much bigger than my previous tears. 😭 I’m grateful for answers, but it sure has been hard to have pain in both hips! My PCP referred me to orthopedic surgery for their opinion..

I also had my right shoulder MRI completed, and due to having loose joints, the results showed some fraying of the rotator cuff, fluid in different spots, and areas of tendinosis. Thankfully, it’s not severe, but I have an appointment next month with my physical medicine specialist to talk about options.

Last month, I saw the second opinion rheumatologist to go over my autoimmune results. He wanted repeat testing but through a reference lab like Labcorp. So I had that done. We did get my results, but he’s booked out past January! So I met with his PA recently. Unfortunately, my results looked even worse in a way. I was diagnosed with an “undifferentiated autoimmune disease.” This diagnosis is when you have numerous abnormal labs and harmful antibodies in the blood, but you don’t fully fit a certain criteria for specific autoimmune diseases like lupus, polymyositis, mixed connective tissue disease, etc. But because of my abnormal labs, I will be treated as if I have the early stages of lupus. I’m being started on a popular but pretty safe lupus drug. It sometimes has a very rare side effect of retinal toxicity. So I have to get a baseline “optical coherence tomography” (OCT) eye exam through my neuro-ophthalmologist at OHSU. I don’t see her until the end of September, though.. When I do eventually start this new drug, could you please pray I will tolerate it and have no allergies or bad interactions? ❤️ Could you also pray that this treatment will help the joint pain in both shoulders and elbows—they hurt so much every day. We’re still not sure if the severe neck weakness I experienced for 7+ months was some sort of autoimmune flare, so we’re praying that this drug can prevent the neck weakness from coming back. It’s amazing and a huge answer to prayer that my neck is doing as well as it is! Feels back to normal! 🥹

Here’s another big praise, too. My mitochondrial depletion symptoms have been pretty stable lately—I know it’s only by God’s grace and your prayers! 🥲 On top of that, it’s been almost 10 months (a great record!) since I was last in the hospital for a mitochondrial crash! The time before that one, I had a severe mito crash followed by sepsis, so I was in the hospital for more than 5 weeks from the end of January through the beginning of March 2024.

Despite these latest challenges with joint pain, labral tears, and rheumatology issues, I’m just so thankful to God for this long period of feeling stable mito-wise. 💚

I want to be honest, though. I’ve been feeling much better lately, so it’s gotten harder to be “stuck” at home. 🙁 I don’t have a car and can still only drive short distances. I never could have imagined that I’d be almost 33 and in this situation. When I was feeling especially trapped at home and watched everyone get to do the things they wanted to do outside of home, this was the headline I read for that day’s devotional by Paul David Tripp: “No matter how stuck you might seem, something in your life is new every morning: the mercy of the Lord.” That immediately brought tears to my eyes because it is so true. 😭 The author continues on, saying, “Each morning the people of God are blessed with mercy from the Lord that is form-fit for the trials, opportunities, pressures, obligations, griefs, and temptations of that day. God’s mercies are not sitting dusty in a warehouse. No, like fresh fruit, they are hand-delivered by the Savior every day.” I hope this passage is an encouragement if you feel “stuck,” too. ❤️

Thank you for being on this long journey with me and for continuing to pray—I’m so blessed by your love and support! To end, here are a few more card designs I’m excited to share when the shop is open! 😊

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The end of an era ❤️

By Kerissa Lee • July 16, 2026

Dear friends, I shared in my last post how excited I was that my j-tube was going to be switched back to the low-profile version at an appointment on June 23rd. Well, that sadly didn’t happen because my surgeon wasn’t comfortable with how much pain, swelling, and bleeding I was still experiencing. It’s a long story and hard to understand unless you’re very familiar with j-tubes, but basically, she said switching wouldn’t be a good idea, and we could try again in a few months. Unfortunately, things have only gotten worse, and no matter how many times I adjust this j-tube, the balloon for some reason keeps getting lodged into my abdominal muscle—it causes horrible pain, and not even my pain medication helps! I almost went to the ED the other day…that’s how bad the pain has been. 🥺 After thinking and praying about it a lot, I finally decided to ask my surgeon if I could have my j-tube completely removed since she still can’t find the cause of why the balloon keeps getting stuck. It’s been nearly 12 years using one, so this is a big deal! I just feel like the tract is somehow failing since the surgery was so long ago. Unfortunately, it can’t be done until the last week of July since it’s a policy of the surgery clinic to not use the tube for 2 whole weeks before completely removing (don’t know the exact day of removal yet). I can’t believe it’s almost the end of an era! The Lord has been so faithful and given me strength to endure over a decade of having a constant tube sticking out of my abdomen. Some days were truly so rough—remember I had that huge abdominal abscess back in 2023 and had to have bedside abdominal surgery and drains placed in the ED? I couldn’t have done this without God’s help. 🥹 You might be wondering, “What happens if I get worse again or have more mitochondrial flares?” Thankfully, I still have my port, so if I was hospitalized many times again, I would be given IV medications and infusions. And, if I did possibly need a tube again, I could have a g-tube placed in my stomach which is a much smaller surgery than a j-tube placed in the small intestine. We’ll cross that bridge if we come to it! In other news, I’ve been continuing to do so very well mitochondrial-wise, and God has been gracious and merciful! I feel undeserving of this huge gift of health when so many others I know are struggling (please keep praying for my uncle who’s been in the ICU since March)!! 😢😔 Aside from all these tube issues, life lately has been so full, but in the best way. I was able to study and complete the training to receive my Pediatric First Aid/CPR/AED certification! I’ve been applying to different nanny jobs and even had my first interview last week! It would simply be amazing if it would work out to have a part-time nanny job for 1-2 days per week when I don’t babysit my foster nephew. Speaking of my sweet foster nephew, he recently turned 1!! He had a “One-in-the-Sun” 1st birthday party which was super cute and special! It’s been so neat to see God’s hand on his life from birth til now.. Considering he was in the hospital for a whole month after he was born, he’s truly come soo far, and life is very sweet with him in it! 🥹💙 On top of all that, I was finally able to take the DMV driver’s test, and guess what?! I PASSED!!! 🥰 So so happy and thankful I was able to complete this simple rite-of-passage that many people half my age often take for granted. I constantly think how huge of a gift it is to simply be physically well enough to drive around town. 🥹 After reading this, you might think I'm all healed! And while I am feeling so much better than before, I just wanted to share that I still do experience mitochondrial symptoms every day: spasticity (it often wakes me up during the night because my back muscles tighten/spasm a lot), central vertigo, minipolymyoclonus which causes muscle jerking and tremors in my hands, chronic pain, insomnia, and many other things. But, I'm so thankful to God for different medications I'm on to help these ongoing issues. There are good days and bad days, but I just look back and see how much worse I used to be! I don't know how long this stable period will last, but I continually thank and praise God for it! 🥹

June update (with happy news!)

By Kerissa Lee • June 17, 2026

Hello, friends, I just wanted to share a blog update and thank you all so much for your prayers these last several weeks. ❤️ They help me to persevere! I previously posted that the interventional radiology team said my old port needs to be removed because of the site being too exposed from skin breakdown. Well, on May 19th, I had a virtual appointment with the IR nurse practitioner. To my great disappointment, she didn’t want me to get a new port and said I need a central line instead. I tried explaining to her that all my previous central lines always got infected and caused sepsis, but she still wouldn’t budge. 😞 I left that appointment and cried. I kept reciting Romans 8:28 (“And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose”). I knew that God was in control, but I was still so sad.. The next day was my port removal surgery and central line placement. Many of you already know this from FB/IG, but I wanted to re-share the following here on my blog as well! When I met the attending physician who was going to do the surgery, I told him my whole story and asked if he could please consider placing a new port instead of a central line. And do you want to hear something soo amazing?! He nonchalantly said, “I can place a port!” I was so shocked! 🥹 I immediately felt God’s mercy and kindness in sovereignly arranging this specific doctor to be the one to care for me. Both surgeries were back to back, and everything was much more difficult than he was expecting! In his chart notes, he stated that it took “more than twice the usual time, an unusually large amount of materials, and required a very high level of technical expertise and skill.” It was a great challenge removing my old port because of scar tissue and because it was so embedded to my chest wall. 😥 He had to yank, pull, and manipulate a ton—all of that caused a huge bruise to form over my chest. When he used fluoroscopy (moving x-ray), he also saw on x-ray that there’s a 7 mm cylindrical foreign body in my chest (pictured below). He assumes it’s a retained port fragment from an old port surgery that happened years ago. We’re just going to leave it there.. 😟 I was awake the whole time because none of the sedation meds worked! I’ve unfortunately had more than 20+ surgeries/procedures, so my body has become immune to certain sedation meds. The team recommends that I have much stronger anesthesia next time.. So thankful that the Lord helped me through this painful process! In other news, I finally get to have this temporary, bulky j-tube replaced with a low-profile one on the 23rd! My GI surgeon was hoping that the temporary tube would give the site a break and help heal all the inflammation (which was caused by buried bumper syndrome when the balloon got stuck in the abdominal wall 2 months ago). And I think that did the trick because the site is no longer leaking a ton! 🥲 Praying that switching back to the low-profile tube doesn’t cause an uptick in pain/leaking.. Last week, I had a bit of a scare when blood started coming out of the j-tube stoma (hole) for several days. We don’t exactly know what caused the bleeding, but thankfully, it stopped! If it does happen again, the GI nurse practitioner ordered an abdominal ultrasound.. If you made it this far, I’d so appreciate continued prayers for my sleep. Still experiencing bad insomnia as a side effect from an important medication that I need. It’s so hard when I can’t fall asleep until after 5:30-6:30 AM every single day. 😔 I don’t know what else to do except take each day as it comes and lean on the Lord for endurance. 💚 Aside from this, still so grateful to God that I’m doing really well mitochondrial-wise! For those who may not remember, my naturopathic doctor at the OHSU pain center started me on 2 very strong antioxidants last year: liposomal glutathione and n-acetyl cysteine. When I started taking both regularly for several months, the neck weakness resolved and the overall muscle fatigue improved a lot. By God’s grace, I’ve physically been very stable which is a huge answer to prayer!! 🥹 P.S. It’s taken me a while to share this, but a few months ago, I added 11 new card designs to my shop. Here are some of my faves. ☺️ I’ve sadly run into another unfortunate predicament with the e-commerce site I sell on, but I’ll try to share that story another time.. 😕

Surgery on Wednesday

By Kerissa Lee • May 15, 2026

Hi, friends, Last week, I unfortunately caught norovirus from my parents who caught it most likely from a wedding. 😞 All the vomiting caused dehydration, and my heart rate was high (up to 150 bpm). Every 30 minutes, I kept getting a notification on my Apple Watch saying that my heart rate was too high. Thankful I didn’t have to get admitted and could infuse the rest of my IV bags here at home. My neck is showing signs of weakness like after the time I got sick in Hawaii. 🥺 Really praying the muscles are just trying to recover from the vomiting/dry-heaving.. On top of that, the skin at my port site has sadly been breaking down over time. My dr. ordered a PICC line for me to let the port site heal. But the IR (interventional radiology) team said I need to have my port surgically removed because the site is “too exposed.” Definitely wasn’t expecting that! 😥 The IR team wants me to get a central line instead of another port, but I tried explaining to them that I’ve had sepsis too many times from multiple central lines. Plus, my quality of life is so much better with a port because I can shower when the needle is de-accessed. That’s just one of the reasons.. If I had a central line, I’d have to cover it and put tape all over which is not fun. I have a virtual appointment with someone on the IR team this coming Tuesday. Could you please pray the radiologist will be understanding, compassionate, and willing for me to have another port placed? I know this is in God’s hands regardless of the outcome. 💚 Surgery to remove my port and place something new (whether it’s a port or central line) is this coming Wednesday.. We’ll know the time the day before.. I’ve been reading a memoir by a young mother named Amber Emily Smith who tragically lost her 3-year old son to drowning in their family’s pool. In her book, she shared the story of the poet Annie Johnson Flint who developed a severe arthritis that left her hands disfigured and also caused her unable to walk. It was in the midst of her suffering that she became a poet. I’m sure many of you have read this poem before, but it’s such an encouraging one, and I hope it fills your heart with hope. ❤️ “God hath not promised smooth roads and wise, Swift, easy travel, needing no guide; Never a mountain rocky and steep, Never a river turbid and deep. But God hath promised strength for the day, Rest for the labor, light for the way, Grace for the trials, help from above, Unfailing sympathy, undying love.”