LemonAID 4 Life-Liza's Brain Surgery Battle Is On!

For those new to our journey, Liza began selling Lemonade in the spring of 2021 at our family bakery following her diagnosis of 3 very rare Cerebrovascular Malformations requiring immediate brain surgeries to save her life. We began traveling back and forth and temporarily living in Boston, where her team of Neurosurgeons specialized in her malformations at Boston Children’s Hospital. And our lives have never been the same.

Since 2021, Liza has had 5 brain surgeries - placing titanium coils in several arteries to stop wrongly connected blood flow into blood vessels; the removal of a collection of blood vessels called an AVM; and multiple cerebral angiograms to manage her condition delicately. She suffers from refractory epilepsy and the after-effects of her surgeries on the right side of her brain, ongoing breakthrough seizures, partial vision loss, cognitive deficits, loss of motor skills and coordination, and much more. These last several years following her surgeries have proven far more difficult for Liza and our family than I ever imagined. Her ongoing medical, educational, occupational and psychological needs are a challenge and struggle ever present in our daily-sometimes hourly-lives. And it just seems to get harder and harder to balance her life’s needs, expectations, and dreams.


Liza's original Lemonade Stand has carried us this far, but we have a long way to go and we can't do it alone. Over the last year, I’ve become Liza’s full-time caretaker, and my involvement in our family bakery is no longer financially providing for my kids, nor their health insurance. Liza’s needs for therapies, treatments, educational development, one-on-one learning, daily life-skills, medical care, surgeries – it’s more than overwhelming at times – and rather suffocating some days. My ability to work full-time has become extremely difficult to do as a single mom and for that my ability to commit to a “set schedule” is contingent upon any emergent medical crisis, as in a seizure that requires a call to 911 and an ambulance ride to Children’s Hospital. Her most recent episode several weeks ago involved my finding her on bathroom floor due to a seizure. Terrifying does not begin to describe the panic of seeing your baby lifeless.

Her needs are ever evolving and quickly becoming exceedingly more than what I can financially provide for by myself. Our new insurance does not cover any surgeries out of state, thus Boston is now an out of pocket expense well beyond what I’ve ever had the resources to pay for. Liza needs a dedicated teacher to spend one-on-one time with her in every subject in school, as her reading and math skills are well below average for her vision struggles and for having dyslexia and dyscalculia, amongst a vast array of other cognitive disabilities. Her dog is going to need more specialized training to assist her in more than one task, which is expensive and ongoing given the variety of disabilities she needs assistance for. She needs a “buddy” to be with her when I need to run errands, or take her little brother to activities, and to help her develop life-skills, be a companion and helper on a regular basis. She further needs an immense amount of therapies - occupational therapy, speech and language therapy, physical therapy, and neuro-psychological counseling and nutritional therapies. And that is just a start for now.

I’m trying to be everything to her, but I have finally accepted that I can’t do it without the assistance and help of others. There just aren’t enough hours in the day or days in the week to do it all and I am one mama navigating this journey blindly, and at times despairingly. I want to give my baby girl every service she needs and every opportunity she deserves without worrying about how to pay for it or how to get her physically to all her appointments. I desperately want to not feel the pressures of having to choose between paying medical bills (this last ambulance and ER visit billed for over $5,000 since we don’t have the policy with our family business anymore . . . insurance in Alabama is so complicated) or other bills and needs. The surmounting weight of the unknowns, the penny-pinching, the physical exhaustion in emergencies . . . it's more than one person can do alone.

And so, as your heart is led, your prayers are said, and your love is shared, please remember my precious girl for knowing that your support in any form, your love in every way, and your prayers at any hour, are felt, appreciated, and more helpful than you could possibly imagine. Her beautiful, magnificent, and angelic life is glorifying Him in His purpose for her life, overcoming the unthinkable, the unimaginable, and the unforgiving aspects of brain surgery, epilepsy, learning disabilities, physical disabilities, and so much more. 


So let’s raise a glass (of Lemonade) to Liza and her continued fight 4 life, one sip at a time!! Thank you from the bottom of our hearts!

Follow Liza's Journey @ HerCrumbsHisCross