By Nayun Lee and Grace Hong

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Note from Grace — it’s ironic that today (Oct 3) is my one year anniversary of my hip surgery. Thank you all for being here, I really appreciate any and all support.

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September 29, 2026

Nayun Lee: Hello friends of Grace! I'm here to tell you a little bit about what's been going on in Grace's life for the past year. Back in October of 2025, Grace had a complete labrum tear which required hip surgery. It was an extensive recovery for Grace, and put a big strain on her body. In May of that year, she started feeling unwell with mysterious symptoms. However, after the surgery, her symptoms have worsened significantly. In the past few months, Grace has been to the Emergency Department several times for chest and abdominal pain with severe gastrointestinal complications. The doctors have not found any answers for her, after imaging and lab work. In the month of September 2026 alone, Grace has lost 35 pounds, and has been eating nothing but occasional plain rice, water, and some diluted electrolyte drinks for necessity. Anything that enters her system, even water, has been causing her to vomit profusely, and she has been suffering from severe pain that keeps her up at night. Other severe and alarming gastrointestinal symptoms have continued to persist with no answers from her medical team. Unable to wait until 2027 to see a gastroenterologist in America, Grace is currently on a flight to Korea for medical treatment there. She will be admitted to the hospital, where they will do more imaging and lab work to hopefully find a diagnosis and begin treatment. Grace's beloved dog, Jaxon, has safely made it to Texas where he will be waiting for her until she returns.

With all this, comes many expenses! The medical bills have been adding up, and Grace will be paying out-of-pocket for her medical expenses in Korea. I ask that you may consider blessing Grace with a monetary gift. Even more, I ask that you may join me in praying that God would give wisdom to the doctors to have an answer for Grace, that He would give physical healing, and that Grace's heart would continue to be strengthened by the Lord. Praise God that Grace's hope doesn't lie in her circumstances, but here she is proclaiming God's faithfulness, goodness, nearness, and providence even in taxing and uncertain times. Praise God that Jesus is our greatest hope, and our greatest joy!

\\ Oct 1-3, 2026 Updates

From Grace: Korean healthcare is so amazing, as soon as I landed my 오빠 made a call to a smaller neighborhood hospital for me to come in and at least get a TPN IV along with nutrients/vitamins since I haven’t been eating or able to keep anything down. I thew up multiple times on my flights over. After checking in and doing intake, we decided to do a full body exam before the IVs. If you don’t know anything about the Korean healthcare system, it’s amazing, futuristic, so efficient, and has machines I’ve never even seen before (yet all of them have US patent numbers on it). They were able to tell me more in my first 21 hours of being in Korea, less than 7 hours of actually being at the hospital, than my year and a half in the American healthcare system. I first went to the doctors in May 2025 with many concerns of my body changes and feeling sick.

heating up my body pre surgery, so scared

G: October 3, 2025 marks one year of my hip surgery: right side hip labrum total replacement + double FAI (which means they shaved my leg and hip bones both down) and a hip capsule closure.

quite possibly one of the darkest times of my life was post surgery… the recovery was much longer than expected and my labrum tearing was also much worse in person, during surgery, than what the original MRI had shown… I was completely missing my labrum from 11 to 1 o’clock. We have no idea where it went. Everything else left was paper thin and shredded.

This was my first surgery ever.

Honestly, I had nothing to do but bed rot and listen to the enemy for 10 weeks. I remained grounded and faithful only thanks to my sweet girl friends in Seattle and in California.

Oct 2 updates

G: the hospital was able to get me in for a colonoscopy/endoscopy and have found some news. Good news is, it’s no longer my liver (America really said I have a liver infection) but the root cause is currently my esophagus. Bad news, there’s two types of masses. Waiting on biopsy results.

I won’t go into further details at this time, but I have been given meds to help me eat and actually keep my rice down. I have a follow-up appointment scheduled, along with other concerns appts scheduled, I will have another colonoscopy / endoscopy in a month. I’m honestly so grateful to even have partial answers as I’ve been so gaslight by American healthcare the past year and a half. I truly thought I was going manic.

lol post surgery

IF you donated to the GoFundMe original link, please chargeback your CC as they locked us out and shut down my original fundraiser written by Nayun, and they might be keeping the funds? Unsure… so sorry as I originally asked to not be involved. (Original Link — https://www.gofundme.com/f/loving-grace-through-her-medical-journey-y7txp?attribution_id=sl:551e0717-76f1-4bc7-abd5-3a870b980168&lang=en_US&ts=1790755613&utm_campaign=man_sharesheet_dash&utm_content=amp30-treatment-6&utm_medium=customer&utm_source=copy_link )

Me being super type A, I’m writing everyone’s names, amounts, and what it’s going towards down, if you’re curious. I love transparency. I’m also happy to provide any tax charity receipts - especially for you business owner, hard working friends.

I don’t have any of my family’s support at this time and I’ve been staying at hotels and airbnb equivalents near my hospitals and things I need to do. I haven’t even received any calls from family members in Korea…regardless, I’m very thankful to God for my chosen family and my most amazing friends. I’m truly the luckiest girl alive because I have God on my side.

If you’ve read it thus far, thank you for your support. Please share with as many people as possible! I always preach about how important community is, so I’ll continue to update this blog post every few days of treatments, I have a lot of down time between hospitals to organize my thoughts and write, and documenting this journey might be healing for me too.

🤍 with love, 은혜