IOWA CITY, Iowa — When Raelyn Miller-Ramirez and her family moved to Iowa from Oregon, they felt a little lost as Raelyn navigated the world without her sight. Thankfully, because of a family connection to Iowa, they found hope when they transferred her care to University of Iowa Health Care Stead Family Children’s Hospital.
Raelyn’s harrowing health care journey started two weeks before her sixth birthday, when she started to lose her balance. Over the next few weeks she would undergo major brain surgery, lose her eyesight, and relearn how to walk and talk again.
In the beginning, Raelyn’s parents, Chantel and Jordan, took their daughter to their local pediatrician several times, where she was treated for what was thought to be vertigo, before being seen for a back-to-school exam by an eye specialist, who detected swelling at the back of her eyes.
Further tests revealed an answer to Raelyn’s symptoms: a sizable tumor at the base of her cerebellum. Raelyn was later diagnosed with medulloblastoma grade IV, a cancerous, fast-growing central nervous system tumor that begins in the brain or spinal cord. Treatment included a seven-hour brain surgery at an Oregon children’s hospital.
“She came out of surgery and her eyes were kind of bouncing, but they said it would correct,” Chantel says, emotionally recalling what happened the second day after the operation as Raelyn recovered in her hospital room. “I got up to walk her to the bathroom and she said, ‘Mommy, why can’t I see anything?’ That’s when we found out she had lost her vision, as well.”
Read Raelyn’s story here.