Brianna Aliza Kaiserman Fund   By David and Melanie Kaiserman January 6, 2006

 Hello everyone,

This is in memory of our daughter, Brianna, whose spirit forever lives on in our memories.  This memoir will be relatively brief and won't be able to express the many hours and days we spent at our daughter's bedside - but it should be enough to give you an understanding about the time and energy we did spend - nor will it adequately represent the struggles of our daughter, Brianna Aliza Kaiserman.  My name is David and my wife’s name is Melanie.  Here is our story. . . .

In the months Melanie was pregnant, her OB was monitoring her and reported to us that everything was fine and told us it was a normal pregnancy.  When Melanie was about 23 weeks pregnant, I was happy to learn I would receive my MBA.  A week later we also learned something else - Melanie was experiencing some cramping and needed to be rushed to the hospital.  After the First Aid Squad brought us to the hospital, we were told almost right away that Melanie needed an emergency C-Section operation.  After the baby was born, she was immediately resuscitated.  We were still in shock about the whole situation.  As we thought we had four more months to decide a name, we had not yet chosen one.  The baby was transferred to another hospital with a NICU unit while Melanie and I were at the original hospital for her recovery.  We finally chose a name while Melanie was recovering, deciding on Brianna Aliza.

Brianna holding Dad's hand

Brianna suffered a brain bleed within a few days, and underwent routine tests and procedures such as sonograms, transfusions and blood gases (which involved sticking a needle in the foot to withdraw blood for the tests). The hospital stuck Brianna several times a day and Brianna didn't seem to like it.  They even performed spinal taps and shined bright lights on her - which she also didn't like. If she could speak, we think Brianna would have said "ENOUGH!"  But she held on and put up a good fight.  She seemed capable of recognizing our voices and our touch.  That gave us a lot of hope as well as a sense of normalcy.

At one point, the hospital recommended we do an immediate transfer to another hospital because they were

Mom and Dad, emotionally exhausted but filled with joy to hold Brianna in their arms

not equipped to offer her more sophisticated treatment.  It was a shock to us but we went along with it.  At the third hospital, our baby underwent even more painful tests and procedures.  Three times on three different nights in the early morning hours, doctors called and said her lungs collapsed and that they had to put tubes in.  They then performed an emergency procedure and put a reservoir into her skull.  We then requested a meeting with doctors who, for the first time, advised us how bad things were with Brianna.  They suggested at this point that Brianna would have an extremely negative neurological future and dismal medical outcome.  We asked them, "If we had all the money in the world and could move her to any facility on the planet, is there anything that could be done to help her?"  They said "no."  Then, at 3 AM about a week later, we received a phone call that Brianna had taken a turn for the worse and that we had to rush to the hospital.  Melanie and I and our family spent the last hours of her life with her as she rested peacefully in our arms until she passed away.

After being so moved by such a long and draining seven week process, we were motivated to find a research fund that would give us an answer about being able to help children like our daughter.  Unfortunately, we can't help Brianna at this point, but we had to search for a fund and foundation that would help future families in our position and to keep Brianna Kaiserman's name alive.

After researching for hours and not finding any charity specifically set up to research Pediatric Neurology, specifically in brain regeneration and healing, we stumbled upon  a select few.  We had a lot of fears about stem cell research that the media negatively portrays, but we were intrigued by CNS's specific goal to do research in brain regeneration.  After spending a lot of time with CNS, we were finally happy to find an organization that would not only research brain cell, neuron, and tissue regeneration exclusively but would give hope for other children like Brianna.  We hope this provides some insight as to the struggles we and Brianna experienced and the reason why we believe that pediatric brain stem cell regeneration research is very important.  Please visit our Brianna Aliza Kaiserman Fund site and consider donating.  We’d also like to take this opportunity to thank all of our friends and family for their love and support.

Yours,
David and Melanie Kaiserman