My mom died on May 22nd, 2023 of complications from CJD.
Before I go into details of her death and the weeks leading up to it, I want to let everyone know a little more about my mom. She loved David Bowie and Frank Sinatra. She loved Disney movies, reading, and medieval history. She took me and my two siblings to libraries and the pool all the time when we were growing up. We were lucky enough to have her around a lot as children. She had infinite amounts of love and patience for her family. She had the goofiest, smartest sense of humor. We could always count her to be there for us. The unconditional love that we felt from my mother was unlike anything else we'll ever experience in life. Her last words to me, a few weeks before she died, were: "Don't worry about me. I'll be fine." She always hated the idea of us kids worrying about her. She always wanted us to focus on our own lives.
My mom's health started to go downhill in April, about six weeks before her death. She lost hearing in one of her ears (we found out that the part of her brain that was close to her ear was the first area to start developing cortical ribboning, a classic sign of CJD on an MRI). My mom saw many doctors before getting her final diagnosis of CJD. We thought it was maybe a stroke, or Alzheimers, or dementia. After a few weeks, her condition deteriorated. She started communicating with my father via written notes. Then one early Sunday morning, my mother woke up out of bed, incoherent, unable to walk. My father called 911 and she was admitted to the hospital. There she stayed in the ICU for a little over a week before being transferred to hospice care.
I started this fundraising page to spread awareness of CJD. No one in my family had even heard of it until my mother got diagnosed. It is a cruel, unforgiving disease that desperately needs more funding for research.
Thank you for reading this and I'm looking forward to the CJD Walk on October 15th.
Rachelle Bonner $50.00