“RAQUAN”!!! “DAVASHAYE”!!! “COME DOWN SATIRS”. When I got down there my Dad said “there’s something we have to tell you about your mom’s health. She is going to have brain surgery in two weeks because she has moyamoya.” My face was torn up, I started to tear up but I was a little confused as to what moyamoya was. “Moyamoya is a rare disease, progressive cerebrovascular disorder caused by blocked arteries at the base of the brain in an area called the basal ganglia.
The name “moyamoya” means “puff of smoke” in Japanese and describes the look of the tangle of tiny vessels formed to compensate for the blockage”. They didn’t put it in those exact words but they explained to me what it was doing to her body. It makes you have strokes and seizures, speech deficits, weaken your muscles or paralysis affecting only one side, (which is my mother’s right side) and it doesn’t stop after just one time. The blood clots that formed in her brain just kept reoccurring. There was no way around it; she had to get the surgery.
I remember when I was about four years old and I saw my mother have a seizure. As she was coming down the steps of my grandparents’ house, she instantly fell down the steps, when she got to the bottom she was shaking; my grandparents jumped up. My mom mom was a nurse so she knew what to do while my pop pop went and called for an ambulance. I was shook, all I could do was cry as I seen my mom being taking away on a stretcher. She called my name and I went over to her, she said “I’ll be fine baby don’t cry” then they took her away.
I don’t know when the first one was but that definitely wasn’t the last. My mom hated hospitals and because of this inherited genetic rare disease she was going to be there a lot more. At the time we were living in Chester Pennsylvania. My mom had to go to Chester Crozer medical center. There they told her there was something else wrong with her (at this time we did not know she had moyamoya). The doctors couldn’t give her the help she needed: but she didn’t know that. They ended up giving her tons of medicine to take to help her with her strokes and blood clots.
When we moved to Delaware the doctors here begin to look at her situation differently. They ran all types of test on her and they decided to send her to John Hopkins in Maryland. There we found out that she had this rare disease and they basically gave her an ultimatum.  She could either get the surgery or have a good chance at life or she can keep struggling and sooner or later die from this disease. They also said it was a possibility she might not come out of a coma from her surgery but my mom didn’t think positive, she knew that if she got this surgery she was going to be fine.
The day of her surgery was one of the worse days in my life. I was scared for my mother and for my family. Everyone was crying and giving her hugs. She had to get one side of her hair shaved off, so I was taking out her hair. The last thing I said to my mom was that I loved her and she meant the world to me. When the doctors came and told us the surgery was a success and that she was fine, my heart dropped to my feet, it was the happiest moment in my life. Now my mom is living a normal and healthy life. She still has the effects of the disease but she’s fine and that’s all that matters.