Luke Child

A dear friend offered to create this CaringBridge website to help us keep family and friends updated.  We appreciate your support and words of hope and encouragement.  And most of all, we appreciate your prayers.

Luke had been having significant pain in his arm and neck for the past couple of months.  He had many different doctor and PT appointments, but nothing was helping much and the pain seemed to get worse every day.  Doctors believed that he had a compressed nerve, possibly from a herniated disc.  Luke finally had an MRI on December 16th.  After the MRI, we were sent straight to the ER, where a neurosurgeon told us that Luke had a 2" tumor on his thoracic spine, putting pressure on his spinal cord.  Luke had begun having weakness in his legs on the 15th, which we now know was caused by pressure from the tumor.  Over the next few hours, Luke's symptoms quickly worsened, and the surgeon felt it best to do surgery right away to try to remove part of the tumor in order to protect Luke's spinal cord.  Surgery was about 3.5 hours long and went well.  The surgeon was able to free up Luke's spinal cord so that it has plenty of space around it again.  Luke spent the night in the ICU.  There is still tumor in front of and to the side of his spine, but the cord is no longer compromised.   Luke had a good night and was in good spirits.  The tumor was sent to pathology to determine what it is and what course of action will be best.  We also learned that Luke does in fact have a herniated disc, which may have been what was causing all the arm and neck pain, but that is a secondary concern at this time.  We will continue to update through this site.  Thank you for your prayers and support.