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Watching a loved one’s life momentarily slip away in the form of a grand mal seizure and the speechless hours that follow wondering if they will ever be the same is an experience that I hope no one would have to experience.
On June 2nd, 2015, my wife, Charise Moore, was found unresponsive in our home. While our 2 year old daughter, Cora, ran unattended around the house and our seven month old son, Rhys, lay crying in his crib, Charise lay motionless in bed. After 9 years of marriage Charise has always answered my calls or returned my texts with a quickness. After hours of calling from work and unanswered text messages, she finally picked up her phone. She could barely speak. All she could utter was, “I’m fine… I’m fine… I’m fine…” Those of you that know Charise, know that her strength, with a generous helping of stubbornness, is among her greatest qualities.
Inconveniently, I wasn’t just at work around the corner. I was 900 miles away in Denver, CO where I had accepted a new job and just started the process of moving our entire lives from Arizona to Colorado. In fact, much of our lives were in boxes and we were preparing to move the rest of the family up the very week Charise entered the hospital. Within an hour of Charise answering the phone I was on a flight to Phoenix.
After paramedics arrived and transported her to a local hospital, Charise spent the next seven days suffering seizure after seizure while doctors fumbled from diagnosis to diagnosis. During her hospital stay Charise suffered more than 20 grand mal seizures. Each seizure increased the risk for permanent brain damage, stroke, or worse. Was it syphilis? Valley Fever? Meningitis? Encephalitis? Meningoencephalitis? After watching my best friend deteriorate over seven consecutive days in a hospital bed and the best answers the doctors could give us were a shrug of the shoulders we decided to have her transferred to the Barrow Neurological Institute at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Phoenix. In hindsight, it was a decision that saved her life.
The team at Barrow’s was tremendous from start to finish and after a few days in the ICU at Barrow’s and suffering similar symptoms doctors decided to try a treatment that would eventually lead us to a diagnosis and hopefully a recovery.
Autoimmune encephalitis, a rare and serious condition in which the immune system attacks the brain, resulting in impaired brain function. I think it’s important to note that this is what doctors believe Charise is suffering from but ultimately have no way to definitively prove this to be the case. Medicine is a great guessing game and with all the technology in the world there is still much we don’t know about the human body. The website: Autoimmune Encephalitis Alliance is a great resource for those of you with more questions. After nearly two weeks at Barrow’s, Charise headed home hopeful all of this was behind her and she could get back to her life.
A life, that at the time, included moving to a completely new place to call home, changing jobs, a strung out husband, two very young children, and trying to patch the black holes of her memory of the life she has lived with pictures and stories from friends and family.
Over the last 3 months Charise has returned to a mostly normal life. During this time she has suffered from occasional memory loss, generalized pain and some emotional and psychological challenges. These symptoms are most likely the result of a combination of her current condition, the experience and trauma in June, and side effects of the powerful medication she must remain on for at least 12 months.
On September 24th, 2015 Charise suffered from another grand mal seizure while at home. After deciding I wasn’t going to carry her to the car with our two unruly children in-tow, I called the paramedics and had her transported to a local hospital where she was eventually discharged and we coordinated care with her neurology team in Denver. This is where we find ourselves today. Telling our story and reaching out to those who continue to offer help.
Throughout this entire experience, Charise and I have been overwhelmed by the love and support from friends, family and even strangers. People continue to ask what they can do to help. Many of you have encouraged us to create a campaign like this as a way to give you and others the opportunity to help. Personally and professionally Charise has impacted thousands of lives in her years as a coach, mentor, friend and teacher. We hope this is a way for those people who continue to want to support her in this great time of need to do so.
Ultimately, I would love for Charise to take a year off and just focus on her health. Those of you that know her know that not working would probably drive her crazy! Her neurology team at the Barrow Neurological Institute and CU Medical Center both encouraged her to attempt to get back to “normal life”, including work, as long as she felt physically and cognitively capable. Trying to get back to a normal routine should aid in her recovery as long as she doesn’t “over-do it”.
The vast majority of the now more than $2 million in medical expenses have been covered by insurance, though some remains to be paid. The proceeds from this campaign will be used to defray the costs of past and continued medical treatments, transportation, and additional childcare costs. After her most recent seizure, the risk to Charise getting behind the wheel is now too great. Medically we are hoping to proceed with a more aggressive protocol that will include conventional and integrative techniques to treat Charise in a holistic manner. Many of those treatments are covered by insurance, while some are not. Most importantly these funds would take a great deal of stress off of Charise who is having a difficult time emotionally trying to cope with the stress of balancing life as a mother, wife, teacher, and the enormity of the task of her recovery. Though many things have come quickly and easily to Charise the average recovery time for someone suffering from AE is 14 months.
The funds from this campaign will be put to work immediately and we will keep everyone updated on our progress via this platform and social media. Charise and I don’t anticipate any unused proceeds, but in the unlikely event that donations would greatly exceed the goal, any unused funds would be donated to the Autoimmune Encephalitis Alliance to support their continued work towards coordinating and uncovering more information about this relatively unknown ailment.
Charise and I want to thank everyone who has offered their thoughts, prayers, support and encouragement and look forward to a hopeful future.
On June 2nd, 2015, my wife, Charise Moore, was found unresponsive in our home. While our 2 year old daughter, Cora, ran unattended around the house and our seven month old son, Rhys, lay crying in his crib, Charise lay motionless in bed. After 9 years of marriage Charise has always answered my calls or returned my texts with a quickness. After hours of calling from work and unanswered text messages, she finally picked up her phone. She could barely speak. All she could utter was, “I’m fine… I’m fine… I’m fine…” Those of you that know Charise, know that her strength, with a generous helping of stubbornness, is among her greatest qualities.
Inconveniently, I wasn’t just at work around the corner. I was 900 miles away in Denver, CO where I had accepted a new job and just started the process of moving our entire lives from Arizona to Colorado. In fact, much of our lives were in boxes and we were preparing to move the rest of the family up the very week Charise entered the hospital. Within an hour of Charise answering the phone I was on a flight to Phoenix.
After paramedics arrived and transported her to a local hospital, Charise spent the next seven days suffering seizure after seizure while doctors fumbled from diagnosis to diagnosis. During her hospital stay Charise suffered more than 20 grand mal seizures. Each seizure increased the risk for permanent brain damage, stroke, or worse. Was it syphilis? Valley Fever? Meningitis? Encephalitis? Meningoencephalitis? After watching my best friend deteriorate over seven consecutive days in a hospital bed and the best answers the doctors could give us were a shrug of the shoulders we decided to have her transferred to the Barrow Neurological Institute at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Phoenix. In hindsight, it was a decision that saved her life.
The team at Barrow’s was tremendous from start to finish and after a few days in the ICU at Barrow’s and suffering similar symptoms doctors decided to try a treatment that would eventually lead us to a diagnosis and hopefully a recovery.
Autoimmune encephalitis, a rare and serious condition in which the immune system attacks the brain, resulting in impaired brain function. I think it’s important to note that this is what doctors believe Charise is suffering from but ultimately have no way to definitively prove this to be the case. Medicine is a great guessing game and with all the technology in the world there is still much we don’t know about the human body. The website: Autoimmune Encephalitis Alliance is a great resource for those of you with more questions. After nearly two weeks at Barrow’s, Charise headed home hopeful all of this was behind her and she could get back to her life.
A life, that at the time, included moving to a completely new place to call home, changing jobs, a strung out husband, two very young children, and trying to patch the black holes of her memory of the life she has lived with pictures and stories from friends and family.
Over the last 3 months Charise has returned to a mostly normal life. During this time she has suffered from occasional memory loss, generalized pain and some emotional and psychological challenges. These symptoms are most likely the result of a combination of her current condition, the experience and trauma in June, and side effects of the powerful medication she must remain on for at least 12 months.
On September 24th, 2015 Charise suffered from another grand mal seizure while at home. After deciding I wasn’t going to carry her to the car with our two unruly children in-tow, I called the paramedics and had her transported to a local hospital where she was eventually discharged and we coordinated care with her neurology team in Denver. This is where we find ourselves today. Telling our story and reaching out to those who continue to offer help.
Throughout this entire experience, Charise and I have been overwhelmed by the love and support from friends, family and even strangers. People continue to ask what they can do to help. Many of you have encouraged us to create a campaign like this as a way to give you and others the opportunity to help. Personally and professionally Charise has impacted thousands of lives in her years as a coach, mentor, friend and teacher. We hope this is a way for those people who continue to want to support her in this great time of need to do so.
Ultimately, I would love for Charise to take a year off and just focus on her health. Those of you that know her know that not working would probably drive her crazy! Her neurology team at the Barrow Neurological Institute and CU Medical Center both encouraged her to attempt to get back to “normal life”, including work, as long as she felt physically and cognitively capable. Trying to get back to a normal routine should aid in her recovery as long as she doesn’t “over-do it”.
The vast majority of the now more than $2 million in medical expenses have been covered by insurance, though some remains to be paid. The proceeds from this campaign will be used to defray the costs of past and continued medical treatments, transportation, and additional childcare costs. After her most recent seizure, the risk to Charise getting behind the wheel is now too great. Medically we are hoping to proceed with a more aggressive protocol that will include conventional and integrative techniques to treat Charise in a holistic manner. Many of those treatments are covered by insurance, while some are not. Most importantly these funds would take a great deal of stress off of Charise who is having a difficult time emotionally trying to cope with the stress of balancing life as a mother, wife, teacher, and the enormity of the task of her recovery. Though many things have come quickly and easily to Charise the average recovery time for someone suffering from AE is 14 months.
The funds from this campaign will be put to work immediately and we will keep everyone updated on our progress via this platform and social media. Charise and I don’t anticipate any unused proceeds, but in the unlikely event that donations would greatly exceed the goal, any unused funds would be donated to the Autoimmune Encephalitis Alliance to support their continued work towards coordinating and uncovering more information about this relatively unknown ailment.
Charise and I want to thank everyone who has offered their thoughts, prayers, support and encouragement and look forward to a hopeful future.