In Support of Lana Rasmussen
Help Lana Keep Moving Forward
Dear family and friends,
Our family is facing a significant challenge: our 14-year-old daughter, Lana, has been diagnosed with severe scoliosis. As we navigate this situation, we want to share how you can help us pursue the best possible care for her at this critical time.
If you know Lana, you probably do not think of her as a medical story. You think of movement.
She started dancing when she was three. This year, for the first time, she was accepted into a dance company and is excited to perform and compete. She recently started Taekwondo. She wants to try gymnastics, figure skating, rock climbing, swimming, tennis, contortion, flips, and apparently—if she can figure out how—flying.
That combination probably tells you something about Lana. She becomes interested in something and wants to do it. She is adventurous, funny, curious, occasionally mischievous, and intensely alive.
In Lana's words:
“A lot of things just seem fun and I want to try them all! … I love adventure.”
That is the Lana we hope people see first.
What happened
Earlier this year, an X-ray revealed that Lana has severe scoliosis, with the largest curve measuring approximately 75–80 degrees.
Seeing the X-ray for the first time was shocking.
For Lana, it was more than a medical diagnosis. Her body is part of how she dances, explores, competes, and imagines her future. She had once been able to bend backward far enough to touch her hands to her feet. More recently, bending her back has begun to hurt.
She wrote:
“It feels like this wasn't supposed to be me. It wasn't supposed to be my story.”
She worries about losing flexibility. She worries about roles in dance. She worries that scoliosis will begin deciding which things she can and cannot try.
And perhaps most importantly, she does not want a curved spine to become her identity. Her original reflections make very clear how much she wants people to continue seeing Lana, rather than “the girl with scoliosis.”
From Lana's mom
As Lana's mother, there is another part of this story that is difficult for me to write.
I keep wishing we had found it sooner.
When we moved across the country from California, Lana had mentioned some unevenness in the muscles of her lower back, but nothing about the situation suggested to us what was developing underneath.
Then our family entered one of the most intense periods we have ever experienced. We were relocating a family of eight, trying to sell a house remotely, finding a place to live, learning an entirely new health-insurance system while I was seven months pregnant, welcoming a new baby, and then caring for another child through a broken arm.
For about a year, Lana was also out of dance.
When she finally returned, I could see something in her back that I had not seen before. That eventually led us to the X-ray.
By then, the curve was severe.
It is very easy for me to replay that year and think, “What if I had noticed six months earlier? What if I had known what to look for?” I wish I had.
But we cannot go backward. What we can do now is give Lana the widest possible set of good options going forward.
The decision in front of us
One surgical option available to Lana is Anterior Scoliosis Correction (ASC).
We are interested in ASC because its goal is not only to reduce the spinal curvature but also to preserve substantially more spinal motion than a traditional long spinal fusion. At the same time, this is still major surgery. Lana does not romanticize that.
She wrote very candidly about it:
“Even the word surgery is scary. It's a huge decision that would affect the rest of my life.”
That honesty is important to us.
We are not asking for support because Lana is excited about having surgery. She isn't.
We are asking because we want the freedom to pursue the care that gives her the strongest future we can reasonably provide, while continuing to investigate her condition carefully and make decisions as new information becomes available.
Lana wishes there were a button we could push that simply made her spine straight again, with no surgery, no scar, no lost flexibility and no memory of any of this. Her own description of that wish is both funny and heartbreaking. She compared it to finally cleaning up spilled milk: she doesn't necessarily want to celebrate the cleanup; she wishes the milk had never spilled in the first place.
We understand that.
Our goal is not to manufacture a cheerful story out of something that does not feel cheerful.
Our hope is simpler: to help Lana move into adulthood with as much health, mobility, freedom, and possibility as we can give her.
What your support will make possible
We want to be transparent about how financial support may be used. We do not yet know the exact pathway or exact final cost because treatment decisions, insurance coverage, travel, and follow-up needs are still developing.
We currently see the expenses in roughly four layers:
Ongoing care and monitoring — approximately $4,000 over the coming year. This may include physician appointments, X-rays and other imaging, chiropractic visits if we decide they are useful, exercise or fascia programs we choose to try, supplements or wellness programs, and other supportive care. These approaches are not being represented as guaranteed alternatives to surgery; part of our goal is simply to have the ability to explore reasonable options while Lana remains medically monitored.
Travel and family logistics — potentially $5,000 or more. Some of Lana's specialist care is far from home. Expenses may include airfare or driving, hotels, local transportation, meals away from home, and childcare for Lana's younger siblings while one or both parents travel with her.
ASC surgery and related medical expenses — likely $25,000 or more out of pocket. We have already been quoted approximately $15,000 in third-party fees associated with the surgery. We also anticipate substantial insurance-related out-of-pocket costs for out-of-network treatment, potentially exceeding $10,000, in addition to possible bracing, imaging, follow-up care, rehabilitation, and other pre- or postoperative expenses. Actual insurance coverage and final costs may differ from our current estimates.
Additional treatment and recovery needs — If funds remain after immediate medical and travel expenses, they may be used for other care related to Lana's scoliosis and recovery. This could include additional specialist opinions, physical or rehabilitative care, carefully considered alternative or complementary treatments, treatment addressing changes in her rib cage caused by spinal rotation, future reconstructive or plastic-surgery consultation if medically appropriate, and practical family expenses that allow us to devote time to Lana's treatment and recovery.
For that reason, this fundraiser is not tied to a single medical invoice. It is a Lana care fund intended to give our family the financial flexibility to make decisions based on what we believe will best support her health rather than simply what we can afford at that moment.
If circumstances change, we will share updates here.
Something Lana wants you to know
There is one thing Lana expressed so clearly that we think it is important to say publicly.
She was reluctant to share any of this because she does not want scoliosis following her into every room she enters. She doesn't want dance class, Taekwondo, family gatherings, or time with friends to become places where everyone immediately asks about her back. She wants places where she can simply be Lana.
As she put it, she doesn't want her “happy place” to become sad because people continually remind her of the hardest thing she is dealing with.
So if you see her, you don't have to ask about scoliosis.
Ask her about dance.
Ask whether she won the reading competition.
Ask what belt she is working toward in Taekwondo.
Ask what ridiculous thing she wants to try next.
Or just tell her a joke.
We will use this page to share medical updates for anyone who wants to follow the journey.
How you can help
Financial gifts of any size will help us create room for appointments, travel, treatment, surgery and recovery. Another way you can support Lana is by sharing this page. Some of the people who eventually help Lana may be people we do not personally know.
Most of all, we are grateful that Lana is surrounded by people who care about her.
We do not yet know exactly what the next year will look like.
But Lana is still dancing.
She is still earning Taekwondo belts.
She is still dreaming up a never-ending list of everything she wants to do and learn.
And our hope is to give her every reasonable opportunity to keep doing exactly that.
With love and gratitude,
Rachel & Josh Rasmussen
P.S. If you would like to stay in the loop and hear about Lana's healing journey, you can follow this page. We will post updates here as the timeline progresses. Thank you!
P.S. If you would like to stay in the loop and hear about Lana's healing journey, you can follow this page. We will post updates here as the timeline progresses. Thank you!
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- Created Sep 02, 2026
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