Teacher thankful for doctors who helped save her life

BY DONNA VICKROY Staff Writer

Something was definitely wrong.

Dawn Marchese was getting dizzy for no reason. Sometimes if she laughed a lot while goofing with her brothers and sisters, she’d get a massive headache.

Sometimes, she’d get nauseated.

“For months, I went to different doctors who couldn’t find anything,” said the Southwest Side elementary school teacher. Finally, the then-18-year-old’s mother took her to see a neurologist.

Marchese had completed just one quarter of community college at the College of DuPage when CAT scans revealed something suspicious.

“That doctor told my mother I needed to go to a specialist,” she said.

A life-saving decision

As her mother flipped through the pages of insurance-friendly specialists, the name Len Cerullo jumped out at her. Cerullo is founder of the Chicago Institute of Neurosurgery and Neuroresearch.

“My mom thought she’d read something somewhere about him being a great doctor,” Marchese said.

Whether it was mother’s intuition or some greater force at work, the decision to call Cerullo, Marchese believes, saved her life.

Marchese’s mom explained her daughter’s symptoms to Cerullo over the phone.

Then Cerullo said something that both frightened and surprised Marchese’s mother: He told her he wanted to see her daughter’s scans that day.

It was a Sunday.

Accustomed to seeing patients on weekends and holidays, Cerullo invited Marchese’s parents to his house that afternoon.

Marchese was hospitalized later that day. Within the week she underwent surgery to remove a brain tumor.

“She had a very serious condition that required immediate care,” Cerullo said.

How was he able to see what other doctors had missed?

“Two things,” he said. “Ask the right questions, and listen to the answers.

“Unfortunately, a lot of doctors spend too little time listening,” Cerullo said.

And even fewer take the time to see patients on their days off.

“You wonder why I see patients at my home? It is because of stories like this. I know I can make a difference, but patients need access to me for that to happen.”

Giving thanks

Last month, having been given the clear on her annual MRI, Marchese, now 34, wrote a letter thanking both Cerullo and surgeon Edward Mkrdichian for saving her life. She enclosed a copy of the certificate she received after earning her Master of Arts degree from Chicago State University in August.

Marchese, who teaches gym, music and art at Dawes Elementary School on Chicago’s Southwest Side, said she went from barely being able to walk or speak following the surgery through radiation treatments and therapy to fulfilling her dream of becoming a teacher.

“This degree has let me put the past behind me,” she said.

Today, she is grateful for her doctors’ talents, for their persistence and for their willingness to really listen when others wouldn’t.

In her letter, she writes, “Thank you for choosing to be neurosurgeons.”

Oddly enough, that profession was not even on Cerullo’s radar when he entered college.

“I thought I wanted to be an English teacher. Then I thought maybe I’d be a psychiatrist,” he said. “I didn’t want to go to be a doctor.

“But I guess you gotta go where your gut tells you to go,” he said.

Marchese said during her most recent visit to Mkrdichian, she promised to send him a copy of her diploma.

When it finally arrived in October, she decided to add the letter of gratitude.

“I felt like I should thank my doctors because they probably don’t get thanked a lot,” she said.

Cerulla said he has received a surprising number of letters throughout the years.

“I’ve had the privilege of taking care of many patients. A percentage do badly, and that takes a big chunk out of you. But the ones who do well inspire us to continue on,” he said.

As for Marchese, she says she is thankful for every day.

“Things that go wrong don’t mean as much,” she said.

Sure, the hair that fell out during radiation grew back much thinner. And she worries that the treatment may affect her ability to have children someday.

But she takes heart in the positives life has afforded her, namely the professional title of teacher.