From Coma to Courage: Kaddy's Recovery from a Brain Fungus

Help Write My Next Chapter: Support My Battle with both a Brain Fungus and Cancer. Strap in for the two year journey of gargantuan ups and downs that got me to here in August of 2024!

In the Summer of ’22 I was living a jam-packed, independent life. I was managing a vodka bar in Chelsea, Manhattan. I relocated to a great studio in Crown Heights and left a Superintendent gig. Also I was in love!

I was at 100% with my health, as far as I knew. Turns out that I have CLL (chronic lymphocytic leukemia). This Cancer damages your immune system and makes you anemic. So I was working 60-80 hour weeks with a compromised immune system.

In early-September my heart was broken by the man I trusted. I felt sick. By mid-September it was worse. I got antibiotics for what I thought was a sinus infection and it didn’t help. Things were rapidly going downhill. I needed an ER…STAT!

I texted my friends Amanda and Michele and they rushed over. I got my last shower for awhile! My oxygen was in the 70’s! Off we went to King’s County Hospital. My last memory is lying on a gurney and handing my ID and insurance card to a nurse.

The next thing I know I am waking up in ICU, VERY confused and with a breathing tube down my throat having lost 40 pounds. My friends are all around with a GIANT unicorn Happy Birthday balloon.

I thought to myself, “It’s my birthday?!?! THAT is a month away!!!”

No. A month had passed. It WAS my birthday! I’d been in a medically induced coma for pneumonia and my right lung had collapsed.

I didn’t recognize my hands and the world didn’t make sense. I became Dory, from Finding Nemo.

Shortly after waking up, they took my tube out and I was breathing with oxygen. I was relocated to the main hospital and there for a month. One horrible, long, disgusting, and frustrating month. I am so thankful for my roommate Heather!

I needed physical therapy to learn to walk again. I taught myself to stand and shuffle to the chair by the window. They couldn’t give me a walker until PT taught me to walk and PT never came.

After a month I was booked into a physical rehab facility in Canarsie, Brooklyn. It was a step up from the hospital. But, just one step. I moved on Thanksgiving Day! My friend Chef Katie brought me a proper meal! And my FIRST shower! Talk about thankful!!!

I spent a month learning to walk again with my spectacular PT/OT team. Once I could prove that I could do 10 stairs, they set me free. The week before Christmas, Michele helped me escape back home to my little studio. It felt like the end of The Shawshank Redemption! I couldn’t wait for my freedom, some sunshine, fresh air, AND ALL THE SHOWERS!

I was on 24/7 portable oxygen and I had a rolling walker to help me get around. I had outpatient physical therapy 2-3 times a week. 2023 had arrived and I switched to my Primary Doctor's home hospitals associated oncologist and pulmonary doctors. I had joined Team Maimonides! Little did I know, that this action would soon safe my life! Never again Kings County, never again!

In March 2023 my family took a trip up from Knoxville, TN for my nephew’s Spring Break. We went to the Coney Island Brewery where Chef Katie was working and Amanda and Michele came to celebrate my recovery with my family. It was a magical reunion…(except I kept falling over)!

I was zoning out of conversations. I couldn’t remember where the bathroom was and my left hand was oddly weak. My family demanded a trip to an ER so off to the hospital I go AGAIN!

(FYI - The doctors did an MRI in October after the coma. The results came back looking like I had a bullet hole in the right side of my brain. I was told to follow-up later with a neurologist. No action was taken.)

In NJ the neurologist came into my room to review the results. “Where are YOUR doctors? We need to get you to them right away!”

What had looked like a bullet hole 5 months earlier was now the size of a golf ball! And the edema (swelling of the brain) was akin to a fall from a 2nd story roof directly onto my head!

They needed to go into my brain to see what it was. Here I was, facing my eminent death AGAIN. However, it explained my petit mal seizures and reduced executive function. I hadn’t even noticed. It’s hard to identify a problem with your brain by using your brain to determine the problem!

My oncologist got me to Maimonides. He also arranged for the head of neurosurgery to open up my skull the next morning. (I requested a lightning bolt scar, but they ignored me. It’s a plain, boring straight one!) I have added a Neurosurgeon and Neurologist to my roster!

They told me that I had a fungal infection. What kind of fungus?

***THE STORY CONTINUES IN THE UPDATE BELOW***