A neurologist in Buenos Aires diagnosed then 28-year-old Ines de Achaval with the rare vascular abnormality in May 2018. It was located in the thoracic region, or the mid-back, from levels T5 to T7.

As a lawyer, de Achaval spends many hours sitting in front of a computer, so she didn’t think her back pain was anything unusual at first. Even the onset of leg weakness didn’t concern her too much. She hadn’t been sleeping well due to the back pain and was probably fatigued, she thought.

But she couldn’t dismiss the abnormal sensations in her leg, like stepping into a hot shower and feeling cold water instead.

“It was crazy, at 28, to live with that time bomb.”

Four doctors in Buenos Aires told her that while they would normally recommend surgery for a symptomatic spinal cavernoma, removing her lesion would be too risky; it was too big and too difficult to access. A hospital in the United States agreed. But one doctor in Argentina said the opposite: it was too risky to leave it alone.

The mother of one of de Achaval’s friends is a doctor and started reading about cavernous malformations in PubMed, a database for biomedical literature. She came across Dr. Lawton’s name. “Dr. Lawton seemed like the person with the most experience internationally in performing this kind of surgery, and I knew he had operated on many cases so that gave me reassurance,” de Achaval said.

De Stefano sent her daughter’s medical records and imaging through the secure Second Opinion portal in June. “It was user friendly, transparent, and simple,” she said. After hearing back from Dr. Lawton, de Achaval scheduled her surgery and traveled to Phoenix with her husband, parents, and mother-in-law. She met Dr. Lawton on Aug. 20, and he successfully removed her spinal cavernoma the next day. She woke up from surgery with paralysis in her left leg, but Dr. Lawton felt confident that it would be temporary. “A couple days later, I started moving it again slowly, muscle by muscle,” she said.

De Achaval began neuro-rehabilitation at Barrow to regain leg strength and function. She was ready to return home to Buenos Aires three weeks after the surgery.

“It is so gratifying when patients who are told that their lesions are inoperable find Barrow and have successful surgery here,” Dr. Lawton said. “Not only does their experience lead to the cure they were after, but it becomes this emotional swing that is so positive for all of us.”