I'm appealing to you for a little help. Sarah has a cousin who lives in Lebanon. She is 9 years old and also has cerebral palsy. Reem (Sarah's cousin), wants to also go to the X-Cell center for treatment in Germany. We were lucky to have her get the same appointments as Sarah. We believed this would help her family tremendously, as they have never left Lebanon before in their life. However, Reem's family has been working with the German embassy for the last two months trying to get visas to take Reem for treatment. Even though Reem's father has paid all the hospital costs already (he has wired the full amount of 8925 Euros) and we have sent the embassy confirmation of payment to the hotel and car rental for both families, they have denied her father and baby brother visas to escort Reem. Reem and her mother were not approved but were not denied either. They were told to wait up to 4 weeks for a response. The problem is, the procedure itself is in four weeks.

My appeal is this. The German embassy in Lebanon has a contact page. The link is http://www.beirut.diplo.de/Vertretung/b ... ntakt.html I would really really be grateful if you are able to just message the embassy that they should give Reem the visa for medical treatment and quickly. I think if enough people send them messages, they might get the urgency of this. Thank you to all who can and a BIG THANKS to those who can get other family and friends to do this too.


For those of you who don;t know about my daughter's treatment, it's in her blog that's linked below!!! THANKS AGAIN!!

Well thank you to all who wrote emails out. Apparently the problem is with Reem being of Palestinian decent. It really reminds me of the whole Grandfather clause that came out right after the Civil war that prevented African- Americans from voting. Reem's grandparents where born in Palestine...yes....back in 1920 or something....but she was born in Lebanon and has lived there her whole life as both her parents. The whole family left Palestine in 1948...do you think they could drop the whole racism against that? No of course not. I got an email from the embassy this morning and this is what it said:

Dear Mrs. Hawana,

thank you very much for your e-mail. As Reem and her mother were informed yesterday the visa will be issued. Due to the fact that they are of palestian origin the issueing process is more time consuming then with other nationals. I expect the authorisation from the German Ministry of the Interior to issue the visa in around 4 weeks. Reem and her mother will be duely informed once the authorisation is here.

Yours sincerely

Claudia Tietze
Head of the Visa Section
German Embassy Beirut Tel. +961 4 929 600, Fax: +961 4 929 605e-mail: info@beirut.diplo.de, rk-visa-10@beir.auswaertiges-amt.de Homepage: www.beirut.diplo.de

This is what I wrote:

Dear Ms. Claudia Tietza,

Thank you for your quick email. While I am glad that Reem and her mother have been approved, the problem with waiting four weeks is that the procedure itself is June 22. That is in exactly 4 weeks from now. The hospital in Dusseldorf (the X-Cell center) not only needs flight information but confirmation that they will make that exact appointment. Reem also needs to be there a few days before because she needs to rest before the first part of the procedure. The first part, which is on June 22, requires her to be under general anesthesia and for her stem cells to be suctioned out of her bone marrow. A very painful and sensitive procedure. This is why she needs to be there a day or two earlier to rest from the flight itself. The other thing is that my daughter has the same appointment and our flights are already booked. Any delay in Reem making that appointment will make hardship for both her mother and for our family (my husband and I). Honestly, I'm not sure why their Palestinian origin is an issue. Perhaps I'm naive for living in the same country my whole life, but I would think that as long as this is a medical issue (and not something where a person is taking a personal vacation) there should be no reason for the Ministry to take an additional 4 weeks to process the visas. I do know that sometimes things are out of the embassy's control, however, if there is something that you can say or do, Please do it. Reem and her mother do not even speak English or have ever gotten on a plane, I will be personally escorting them as well as providing any translation for them and even guiding them as Germany and Lebanon are quite different in both culture and society. Any delay in Reem's appointment at the hospital will mean a delay for my own daughter as well as an increase in financial cost because of changing our airline tickets and having to take extra vacation time with no pay from our employers.

Thank you again for your help,

Lina Hawana

I hope it does work out and I want to thank again everyone for your help and support.

We will be praying for this situation and hope it all works out. Keep us posted.

Thanks Liz. The procedure is in less than two weeks and still no sign of the visa or anything. I feel so bad for her but we've done all we can. As for Sarah, we're leaving on Sat for Germany. This past weekend we went to a special needs seminar in Orlando. Not only did we get a lot of good information there, there was a session that was just parents with children with CP who just sat around and talked. It was WONDERFUL because we got to see what kind of things they went through so we can be a bit 'prepared', like battles with the school system.

I am sure you are already in Germany. Just know that we are praying and keeping our fingers crossed that everything works out for ya'll.

Thanks guys! Sarah's cousin finally got to Germany and had the procedure done. We are back home from Germany ourselves and it seems that we are seeing some slight improvement with Sarah. She has more balance and is more vocal. Thanks all for your prayers!

If you didn't get all the help you needed you could check out the US clinic in So Cal stemcellmd
That should work out a lot less expensive. I know the Dr there also helps the stem cells develop much better by giving a stem cell mobilizer you can see that at Stemgevity which should help will all stem cell treatments.
Good luck and God bless.

where can i find a medical billing software at?