For those that never had the pleasure of meeting my mom, Valerie, she was a tremendous woman. Not only was she an amazing wife of 54 years, a mom to 3 children, but also a proud, proud grandmother to two grandsons, (and in 2019, a great granddaughter named Valerie!)
She was a fierce lover of the Pittsburgh Steelers & Chicago Blackhawks, having spent most of the late 50's with my dad attending games and cheering her on. She loved the Lord and read her Bible every morning while enjoying her cup of coffee. She enjoyed cheering on the University of Michigan Wolverines football team and she loved lighthouses, life is good t-shirts (which she had close to 40), tennis, kayaking, and just sitting around the firepit with her family and grandsons.
In January 2014 she began showing symptoms of imbalance which quickly turned to memory loss and other symptoms that couldn't be diagnosed properly until I took her to Rush University in Chicago. Trying to process what the neurosurgeon said to me on March 31st, that this Creutzfelt-Jakob Disease has NO CURE, and that typically our loved one has weeks, months, but no more than a year. He was right, after getting a second opinion at the University of Chicago, my mom passed away on May 2nd, 2014.
Since this disease doesn't get the recognition as some other diseases do, it’s even more important to raise funds to help find a cure one day and to raise awareness!
Thank you so much for your support!
Hugs!!