08/06/2025
A final gift to my mom — and a revelation about the illness I didn’t know I had.”
It was June 15, 2017.
I had just arrived on a flight from Atlanta to Dulles International. Several days earlier, I’d received the call no one wanted to get—that my mother, under hospice care, didn’t have much time left.
My sister picked me up at the airport, and we were on our way to see mom one last time—to say goodbye.
On the way to see her, I stopped at a grocery store and saw a small Gund stuffed cat—Bootsie. I knew right away she was for Mom.
Growing up, we had a beautiful long-haired cat named Tippy—light gray and white with some brown tipping—who had been a beloved part of our family. Tippy’s life was tragically cut short when she was hit by a car at just a few years old, but the memory of her stayed with us.
When I arrived at Mom’s room, she was in bed and barely able to see or hear. But when I held Bootsie close and asked, “Mom, do you remember Tippy?” Her face lit up with a smile I hadn’t seen in a long time.
I placed Bootsie on her chest and gently rubbed her cheek with her, bringing back a moment of warmth and joy during her last few days.
I had been formally diagnosed with Cat Scratch Fever nearly five years earlier, in 2012, by a doctor in NYC.
My mother (a retired nurse) warned me repeatedly as a child, “Don’t let the cat scratch you, Sylvia, or you’ll get Cat Scratch Fever.”
But after stopping treatment for this chronic infection five years prior, I didn’t realize that it was still smoldering in my body.
It was only during a recent revelation that I realized the infection was reactivated. I now fully understood I had been living with a low-grade form of the illness for years—even after my initial treatment in 2012.
Looking back, that moment with Bootsie and Mom took on new meaning—one of life’s ironic intersections. There I was, holding a gift that reminded us of a cat we both loved, while unknowingly still battling the very illness Mom warned me about as a child.
For years, I was too sick to visit her. Despite multiple misdiagnoses and chemical sensitivity, I finally made it to her side.
Bootsie became more than a gift—she symbolized the tangled connection between my past, my health struggles, and the love I shared with my mom.
After Mom passed, I kept Bootsie close for a time. Though I eventually had to let her go, what she represented—the love, the memories, the irony woven through my journey—remains.
Sometimes life feels like a movie, full of unexpected connections, heartbreak, and meaning only clear in hindsight.
And this is why I understand what my clients are up against—because I’ve lived it. This is why I can help them uncover and explore what’s been missed. Living both sides of the search for answers shapes a smarter, more strategic kind of advocacy.