>> [MUSIC]
>> It was a normal weekend,
during the summer after her graduation.
Everything was well.
We got a very interesting phone call
after 6:00 in the morning from her boyfriend Tanner,
who said that he couldn't wake Kate up.
>> Listening to him,
Kate, do you hear me, Kate?
My heart just sank.
>> We ended up being directed directly to the hospital.
>> Through the result of the MRI,
we found out that she had an AVM.
>> An AVM or arteriovenous malformation is an abnormal tangle of
blood vessels where the arteries and
veins are connected in ways they shouldn't be.
That can because problems by
creating pressure in the brain where it shouldn't be,
it can cause seizures,
they can bleed, and they can be very dangerous lesions.
>> I'm a dancer and throughout my life,
I've never had any signs of a seizure.
Nothing odd that would allude to a seizure or anything like that.
It was very strange that I randomly had one.
>> It left a speechless like,
how are we going to take care of this?
>> Once we've found Justin Caplan,
I immediately felt comfortable with him.
He gave me so much hope and reassurance through the whole process.
>> In Kate's scenario,
we thought that taking out the AVM
through surgery would be the best option.
But given how much blood supply there was to the AVM,
that would've been a very dangerous operation.
What we did is something called embolization.
We go through an artery either in the arm
or the leg, to the brain,
where we can get access to
arteriovenous malformation and start closing down
the blood vessels so that we can make
her surgery much safer for her.
>> Her first embolization was on my birthday in November,
getting a birthday card from her,
I still can't talk about.
>> I want to have just a little bit left,
like I love you guys and you helped me a lot,
just because I wasn't sure.
Now, that card means a lot to my family.
>> Being diagnosed with a brain
AVM or arteriovenous malformation is a scary thing for anyone.
Having a family with you who's
helping you through this and caring for you and encouraging you,
I think it's very important for the patient.
It's very important for us as well to
get to know the patient's family,
because this isn't something
that really one person can go through alone.
Craniotomy literally means taking a piece of the bone off.
What we have to do is we have to make an incision to get down
to the skull where we take a piece of
the skull off to get to the brain.
Through that we're able to get to
the arteriovenous malformation and remove it or resect it.
Brain AVM is really something that's best cared for at
a specialized tertiary care center like Hopkins,
where we have a lot of experience dealing with these.
>> When I woke up from my surgery,
I just felt so relieved,
so happy, and just proud of myself. I made it.
>> We got a call from Dr. Caplan,
he said everything went
well and I've got somebody here that would like to talk to you.
She got on the phone.
>> It was so good to hear her voice.
The nurses and doctors at Hopkins just showered her with love.
During the time of COVID,
that's exactly what we really
needed to know that she was in good hands.
>> They were that family for me during that time.
Their support was more than words can describe.
>> She had a follow-up angiogram with us a year after
the surgery that showed the AVM is completely gone.
Her brain looks great and I
expect her essentially to have a cure at this point and to
go on and live a normal life that a young person in their '20s
should be living with
really no expectation that
this should impact the rest of her life.
>> I actually found a love for
the medical field after all my surgeries.
It just given the amount of care that Dr. Caplan,
his team they made such an impact on my life that
I want to make an impact on other people's lives.
I am getting back into dance after off my surgery.
It's been taking me a little bit of time,
but I have no limitations or anything.
I'm very blessed to be completely fine.
>> [MUSIC].