I found out through my husband that I had had a grand mal seizure and he caught me. I met Desiree
when she was about 30 weeks pregnant. She was brought into the hospital after having a seizure.
We ended up doing an MRI of Desiree's head and we found a brain tumor that was about three
centimeters in size. It was crazy. It was really hard. It was scary. The decision had to be made
did she need to be delivered then or could she carry the pregnancy to term and then be delivered.
We delivered Desiree at 38 weeks. She was set up for specialized surgery
following her pregnancy so we delivered her to give her enough time, six weeks to
recover. I had the surgery and I was in the hospital and when I came out of the surgery
in my mind I understood everything but I couldn't speak, I couldn't read, I couldn't write.
She was afraid but she was always very positive. She said well we're just going to beat this.
Kaiser was awesome. They implemented my family, they taught my husband how to help me
do little games and tricks. I was slowly gaining progress but it took a while.
It took probably like six months for me to speak clearly, be able to beginning, middle and end
put together a process of making a bowl of cereal. Something so simple was so complex.
After i had completed my year of chemotherapy I tried to get a little bit more of my energy
back and started kind of really being more aggressive with a healthy lifestyle.
I signed up for the Kaiser thrive half marathon and it was great. It was awesome. My husband and I
did the triple crown. I don't run fast, I run slow. But i think it's important to run your own race.
Today life is amazing. I am the new ADA for volunteer services for Kaiser Permanente
and so this has brought me to a big platform that I can continue to help encourage, mentor
and support all of the wonderful volunteers and really share with them that members come in
and they're full of just emotions - sometimes good sometimes rough - but you're there to be
love and encouragement and support like what a privilege that is to be part of an organization
that saved my life. There's probably nothing better for a patient than having someone who's been
through it to help mentor you and guide you and support you so her experience and her positivity
are a huge plus for anybody that she encounters. The team of doctors that I
had, they worked together as a team to help me. There was moments in my journey that
my doctors would give me that sense of hope of Desiree don't give in, don't give up because
you don't know what kind of research is going to be out there.
You just don't know and I just think back and think if I would have gave up I would have lost
the opportunity to see my family grow. For that Kaiser saved my life.