Meet Mary Kathryn

In July 2007, I was diagnosed with a benign brain tumor the size of a lemon. Four days after my diagnosis, I underwent nine hours of brain surgery, with complications, at Children's Hospital in Birmingham. I recovered after two weeks inpatient, started outpatient therapy for right-sided weakness, and tried to get back to my "normal" life. A few months later that same year, I started feeling "tingly" in my feet. After consulting with my neurosurgeon, I was referred to a neurologist who diagnosed me with an unnamed auto-immune disease. I rapidly started to deteriorate and found myself back inpatient at Children's Hospital. This stay, however, would last longer than my first back in July multiple times over. I spent the Christmas and New Year's holidays inpatient and would be discharged nearly sixty days after I was admitted, multiple failed treatments, and still not many answers as to what had plagued my immune system. I was 14-turning-15 years old at the time and had no idea that these events would alter the course of my life forever. 

In 2008, I started chemotherapy treatments to kill whatever disease was in my body. I continued outpatient therapy and attended multiple appointments in hopes of figuring out what was going on. It was at these multiple appointments that my family was introduced to Magic Moments. That Fall, I was granted a Magic Moment -- to fly to California and see a taping of the game show Wheel of Fortune. I chose this because during my inpatient stays, my family and I would religiously watch Wheel every weeknight at 6:30 pm. It was one of the only things that we could do as a family to feel normal. Little did we know, I would be surprised by the Wheel of Fortune crew with my name on the letterboard and meeting the two stars of the show, Pat Sajack and Vanna White. In addition to seeing a taping of the show, Magic Moments gave me some spending money to take to Rodeo Drive and gave my family and I Universal Studios passes. 

It was the trip of a lifetime. Magic Moments not only went above and beyond taking care of my family and I on our trip, but they gave us something we never imagined: the ability to be a normal family on vacation. For that, I owe Magic Moments everything and have made it part of my life's work to give the same to other families like mine. 

In my senior year of college at Auburn University, I was able to begin to make good on that promise. I interned at Magic Moments in Birmingham, volunteered in my spare time, and even began speaking at fundraising events on behalf of Magic Moments. After I graduated, I continued these endeavors and became a member of the River Region Junior Board in Montgomery, where I now reside with my seven-year-old Yellow Lab, Wally. When I'm not at work as an adolescent mental health therapist, you can find me fixing up my 1940's house in Old Cloverdale, spending time with family and friends, and spreading the magic of Magic Moments.