Donna Beemen:  

After graduation I went to East L.A. JC, graduated with an A.A. then transferred to Long Beach State Collage, and majored in Home economic education and English, where I received a bachelors degree and a general secondary credential and a minor in English and a special secondary credential in Home Economics. I taught home economics in junior high school- South Gate junior high and Paul Revere JH in Westwood. I taught ten years for the Los Angeles city school district. I got married when I was a senior in collage and divorced 3 years later.(great-fully) Then I met the Love of my life a year later skiing with friends, and have been married for 42 years. We have one daughter and one stepson. No grandchildren to my disappointment. I lived in long beach during collage, and after marrying we moved to Pacific Palisades, and then my husband who worked for IBM transferred to Boulder Colorado and we have been here ever since 1972. Our daughter was two years old when we moved to Colorado. It was a wonderful move. I was hired by Boulder Valley School District the second year we were here. I taught one year before becoming ill. I was 32. I went in to the hospital for a biopsy for a tumor in my chest. We were expecting it to be breast cancer, but the tumor turned out to be Hodgkin's Disease stage 4, which is a type of Lymphoma. After the surgery in ICU, they attempted to remove me from the respirator, but could not get the endotracheal tube removed. I was off the oxygen long enough (11 minutes, and caused brain damage) to put me in a coma for two months. When I woke up I did not know where I was or what had happened. Everything was very blurry, and I could not talk. I could only see shapes. My eye site very quickly improved. Due to brain damage from the lack of oxygen at the onset of the coma, I lost coordination and balance and speech. I went through two and a half years of chemotherapy. Total hair loss but it all grew back, and being sick from the chemotherapy. My daughter was 3 1/2 at the time. Over the next 5 years I was going to PT, OT, and speech therapy. My biggest surprise was that I was able to start horse back riding again. I had my own horse for 20 years. He was my biggest strength, he should me that I could do a lot more with being disabled then I thought ...Expand for more