The Journey started over yonder in Austin, Texas. Born of a Scottish-Irish first soprano from San Angelo and a businessman of German-descent from San Antonio, I spent most of my childhood singing alongside my mother. At times I participated in even four vocal groups at a time and remember regularly listening to my mom’s 8-track tapes of Barbra Streisand and Dionne Warwick. Singing quickly became my passion. As I got older, however, I felt compelled to pick a reasonable major in college, so I went from journalism to marketing and ultimately to psychology, which, in retrospect seems less than a logical evolution.
After graduating with a psychology degree, I took off to Los Angeles in hopes of being a studio session singer because I felt more comfortable in the studio as opposed to being out there on the stage. I sang backup for a rock band for a short stint while working on my own vocal demos and sang mostly for free on various projects, but did have an occasional paid job such as doing children’s voiceover work. My first daughter Katelynn was born, and to make a living, I started a medical transcription service. I did this for several years, and then my second daughter Cassie was born.
When Cassie was 13 months old, she had a “grand mal” seizure that lasted for an hour. She was hospitalized at Wolfson Children’s Hospital for a week, and our world began to turn upside down. She was also diagnosed with severe developmental delays. I quickly learned about her condition and the different medications she needed to minimize her seizures. My life was becoming consumed with trips to the neurologist and therapy appointments. I was all at once feeling I was playing the role of a nurse, while I felt the need of a new challenge in my life. I completed the second-degree bachelor program for nursing at Jacksonville University in 2002.
I had written a few songs before, but didn’t consider myself a songwriter per se, but a singer/vocalist. This changed as I was going through the experience of caring for Cassie and dealing with all the struggles that often accompany caring for a special needs child. I felt compelled to begin creating music as a way to help deal with these experiences and maybe in the process have a positive effect on someone else’s life.
A couple of years after my third daughter Sophia was born, I went back to school, completing my master’s at University of North Florida in 2011. I started working as a hospital practitioner for the Liver Transplant Service at Mayo Clinic soon thereafter. I continued on at UNF to complete my doctorate in nursing practice (DNP) and graduated in December 2014.
It sounds like a neat, tidy story, but something totally unexpected happened in August of 2013. I was diagnosed with breast cancer. I had the privilege of knowing the breast cancer surgeon Dr. Sarah McLaughlin at Mayo and emailed her with my pathology results. The next week I underwent a mastectomy and lymph node dissection. Unfortunately, it had spread to 11 lymph nodes, putting me at stage 3 invasive cancer, though thankfully had not metastasized to other parts of my body. I completed chemo and radiation therapy and went back to work wearing a wig (thanks to In The Pink). I have a family history of breast cancer, and my sister Lori had cancer of the uterus also. Genetic testing showed that I had a rare genetic variant that put me at risk for these types of cancers.
Despite the sometimes gloomy outlook one may have when learning the odds of surviving such a destructive disease, creating music throughout these years has enabled me to look beyond what is known and foster hope in spite of what is not known. I hope to now use the music to raise funds for breast cancer causes in an effort to finally put an end to the devastating illness.
