Family chooses Barrow for annual holiday gift
The answer to the annual Davis family question—Who should we give to this Christmas?—was a no-brainer in 2007. Everyone agreed that the only possible recipient was Barrow Neurological Institute.
Just six months earlier, 29-year-old Christina Davis had received care at Barrow for a subarachnoid hemorrhage, bleeding in the brain that can lead to severe disability or even death. The medical crisis—the first faced by Christina, her seven brothers and sisters, mother and father—left the Valley clan shaken but grateful.
"Thank God we live so close to that amazing hospital and have Dr. Spetzler. He's the greatest!" says Christina.
Christina's medical emergency began with a headach that got progressively worse. When Christina got lost driving to a friend's home and then began vomiting and lying in a fetal position, her friends called 911. By the time paramedics arrived, Christina was confused and having trouble answering questions. Doctors at the hospital where Christina was taken at first thought she was drunk. But a CT revealed bleeding in her brain, and she was transferred to Barrow.
There, the neurosurgery team put Christina into a medically induced coma and drained the hemorrhaged blood from her brain. They found no cause for the hemorrhage during her 21-day hospital stay.
"When the cause is not evident on the angiogram, you fall into an incredibly favorable group," Dr. Spetzler told the family. "If nothing shows up on follow-up scans, there is an incredibly small chance of recurrence. It could be that a tiny vessel bled, then shut off, and is now as healthy as the rest of the vascular system."
Christina's parents, Paul and Shirley Davis, are the founders of Davis Enterprises, a real estate development and management company. Two of the couple's children—Nick Davis and jenifer Lunt—now manage the company, with the entire family as partners.
The family has been making an annual gift to a charity for many years. "We've received the gift of success, and we should return it," says Paul.
The Davis family has other ties to St. Joseph's—Paul played in a high school band that performed at a 1951 groundbreaking for the hospital, and Shirley was a registered nurse at St. Joseph's in the 1960s.
