On December 13, 2022, my mom Terry was having dinner with my dad when she said she had the worst headache of her life. She collapsed getting ready to leave for urgent care. My dad turned her on her side and called 911, a move that saved her life. I rushed over and got there just as the ambulance was pulling up.

She was 72, recently retired after forty years spent building healthcare systems for the most vulnerable Americans, most recently as COO of Molina Healthcare, where she grew the organization from four states to thirteen and enrollment from 750,000 people to four million. She knew exactly how this system was supposed to work. And she was nowhere close to slowing down: still serving on company’s boards of directors, still traveling the world with my dad, still getting lunch with friends and competing in 5Ks.

She had no idea, but she'd been born with an AVM (arteriovenous malformation), a tangle of abnormal blood vessels in the brain that most people never know they have, since it rarely causes symptoms. Hers ruptured, causing a hemorrhagic stroke that affected her cerebellum, the part of the brain that controls balance, coordination, speech, and swallowing. She needed two brain surgeries just to survive the first few days.

What followed was nine months moving between hospitals, rehabs, and facilities. Insurance only covers intensive rehab for the first three months after a brain injury. My mom spent that entire window fighting to stay alive, not recovering, and by the time she was stable enough to actually work on getting better, insurance considered her time up. More than one doctor told us this was likely as good as it would get.

We didn't accept that.

We brought her home and built a full care operation inside my parents' house: round-the-clock nursing, private therapists, a healthcare management team. And, our house was never empty. My cousin Niccole, a nurse, and my best friend Aneesha, finishing medical school, both moved in, along with my mom's brother, Paul. Family and friends flew in from across the country and stayed for months. My mom's colleagues, CEOs and physicians, were a phone call away at any hour.

We were only able to do this because of everything we had: the money, the network, the knowledge, the time. Most families get the same call we did with none of it.

She's home now. She goes to dinner, travels with my dad, and three years out, she's still making progress every day. She is proof that the outcome you get when someone keeps going, when someone has the right support, is completely different than the one the system defaults to.

Sixty-three million Americans are unpaid family caregivers right now, and most are told what we were told: that there's a ceiling, that this is as good as it gets, that it's time to stop. We know that's not always true, because we lived it. That's why we built Team Terry: to speak, advocate, and put real tools in the hands of families who are fighting for someone not to give up, so they know they don't have to figure it out alone.