SURPRISE, Ariz. — A Valley couple is raising money for an upcoming surgery to remove a one-in-a-million tumor.
It was about a month before Christine and Joshua Lanning celebrated their two-year wedding anniversary when she was diagnosed with Chordoma, a slow-growing bone cancer found in the spine.
Worldwide, one in a million people are diagnosed with Chordoma per year. It is often found near the tailbone or the skull. Only 6% of them are lumbar spine tumors, that’s where Christine’s tumor was found—her L3.
“For her to have it in her lumbar is rare on top of rare,” Joshua said.
Christine had experienced chronic pain in her neck for about two years. She saw a neurologist and did physical therapy, and it helped for a while until the pain returned.
Then in September of this year, she presented pain in her kidneys and went to the emergency room. During the CT scan, doctors found a lesion on her spine.
“Lesion we’ve only heard with my mom’s cancer, so we just looked at each other and said, ‘no way,” Christine recalled. “But we were pretty positive about it, we thought it was nothing.”
The couple consulted with several doctors. One did a biopsy.
“I think it was October 10 [when] the doctor called,” Christine said while she fought back tears. “I heard him say cancer and it was pretty shocking because I’m a pretty healthy person.”
Christine now has to travel to Chicago and undergo an extremely difficult and long two-part procedure.
“They’ll go in, open her up and remove any vascular and muscle tissue. They’ll implant two large rods to fuse her spine from the L1 down to the L4. Then the next day they’ll go in from the side, her ribs, and they’ll take the vertebrate and remove her L3 as an entirety, so they don’t compromise the mass inside,” Joshua said.
“The mass in L3 is like a toxic water balloon, full of cancer cells that if it’s compromised it can travel throughout the body and metastasize,” he added. “Once they remove that, they’ll put a surgical implant that will mimic her vertebrate.”
The couple expects to be in Chicago for a month if it all goes well. Both will miss work, but only Christine has a guaranteed job when she is able to return.
Joshua, a Marine Corps veteran, is working double shifts in the month they have left until the operation, in anticipation of the medical costs that are not all covered by insurance.
“I haven’t been at my job for over a year, so I don’t have [family paid leave] for that job, so if I leave longer than 3 days I won’t be able to come back to a job,” he said.
Although Christine’s diagnosis is rare, cancer is anything but for the Lannings. Joshua lost his father to cancer at 13 and Christine’s mother recently battled multiple myeloma, a bone cancer.
“She’s doing well, she’s got her hair coming back so happy about that,” Christine said. “With her fighting this, I know I can and will too.”
While the Lannings acknowledge the future is uncertain, they are staying positive and being guided through their faith.
“We really feel like God’s had a hand in this the whole time and he will watch over us,” Christine said.
Joshua created this GoFundMe to fundraise for any incurred costs as they battle Christine’s Chordoma.
The surgery is scheduled to take place sometime in January 2023.
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