Letter to Dr. Vining at Johns Hopkins

02/26/2008

At the recommendation of a radiologist friend of ours that looked over Jessie's images this morning, (Thanks Joe and Suzie!!) I have sent emails and voice mails to Dr. Vining and staff myself. This is the letter and message that I communicated this morning. This is rather dry reading, but someday, I hope that it helps others in the same situation. I plan to document everything in hopes of helping others with this struggle.

The letter to Dr. Vining:

Dear Dr. Vining,

My name is Cris Hall, and my daughter Jessie Hall was diagnosed on Wednesday, February 20, 2008 with Rasmussen’s Encephalitis. She is almost 6. Her pediatric neurologist is Dr. Monica Chacon at Cooks Children’s Hospital, Fort Worth Texas. Her case was presented in conference with the neurology staff at Cooks, and they believe that her case is consistent with stage III of Rasmussen’s Encephalitis. A hemispherectomy was recommended, and in a time-frame of “weeks, not months”.

Although we have complete faith in Cooks and Dr. Chacon, We would like a 2nd Opinion from the best person in the field. This will help us to have long-term peace of mind and to know that we did our best for our daughter. From research, your are that person and we desperately need your help, so that we may move forward.

After talking to Dr. Chacon’s office, it appears that we are not getting traction in getting things set up to come to Baltimore to talk with you. I’m not sure what the delay is, but I wanted to personally offer ANY help in breaking down the barriers and getting this off the ground so that we can get Jessie up to Baltimore and move forward.

You can read more about Jessie’s case on her blog at http://www.hallzoo.com/ and click on “Jessie’s Blog” or click on the following link : http://jessiekelley.blogspot.com/

I have all of her MRIs, PET Scans, EEGs on disk and we are ready to get on a plane and come to Baltimore so that we can hear your perspective on her case. We can be in Baltimore as quickly as reasonably possible.

Please call me as soon as you get this, so that we can talk and move forward.

Best Regards,

Cris Hall
817-307-9880 (cell)
682-225-5085 (cell)

http://jessiekelley.blogspot.com/