Anyone familiar with Spokane Shriners?

[MontanaMom]

Our 14 year old daughter is being evaluated at Spokane Shriners Hospital. In the past year, her thoracic curve increased from 18 to 30 and her lumbar curve increased from 24 to 40. The doctor had felt she was unlikely to grow more when she was evaluated a year ago, but this year she grew 1.5 inches and that may have accounted for the increase in curvature. We are beginning to realize that surgery may be indicated.

My husband and I are trying to decide if Spokane Shriners is the best hospital to have the surgery done, or if we should be doing more to investigate alternatives at this time. We live in northwest Montana, a 4.5 hour drive from Spokane. This would be the closest option, but we don't know if it's the best.

We do have health insurance issues which will be a factor in our decision, unfortunately.

Do any of you have experience with Shriners hospitals, Spokane in particular?
Closest other options would be Seattle or Salt Lake, both a significantly longer drive. I'm not even sure how we would cope with a 4.5 hour drive home from Spokane. How long would we need to stay at a hotel in Spokane before our daughter could handle a trip of that duration to come home?

Thanks for any advice,

MontanaMom

[Lura]

From Montana too

Hi there. My son had surgery in Spokane in March of 2005 and we continue to commute for x-rays. Alex was found to have a broken rod in June, so we are regrettably anticipating another surgery. The rod appears to be due to a fusion that did not occur. I was extreemly happy with Shriners in Spokane. They have an awesome staff of doctors and nurses. Keep me posted and good luck to you.

[WNCmom]

MontanaMom:

We live in far western NC, which is a minimum of 3 hours from any hospital we would have chosen to do the surgery on our son. We elected to go to Shriners in Philadelphia (where he got great care, BTW), and we flew. Our return home travel day after surgery lasted 9 hours, including a cab ride, two flights with a plane change, and a 1.5-hr car ride. Our son was not comfortable, but with pain medication he coped very well. We did stay a few days in Philly after he was discharged to make sure things were okay. Our trip home happened at about 10 days post-op.