- December 4, 2025
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At 1 month old, Makenzie Memolo went in for an MRI.
The ultrasounds were fine during her time in the womb. But after Mackenzie was born, she lost weight in her first five weeks of life and was marked a failure to thrive. Her parents, Kathy and Shawn Memolo, were shocked.
The Memolos thought the appointment would be simple: She would get the MRI done, they would take her home and find out the results a few days later.
They were wrong. She needed emergency surgery.
Nobody could have predicted Makenzie had hydrocephalus and would become wheelchair-bound, diagnosed blind, have epilepsy and cerebral palsy.
The Memolos never imagined the amount of community support that blossomed for their family and their now 6-year-old daughter. Friends, community members, organizations and even strangers are raising money to support the Memolo family as they try to find a new vehicle to ensure they can meet Makenzie’s needs.
After Makenzie’s MRI at 1 month old, the doctor wanted to talk to Kathy and Shawn Memolo right away. They were taken into the emergency room, where a neurosurgeon explained that Makenzie had hydrocephalus.
Everyone has fluid around their brain, which normally drains on its own. Hydrocephalus means the fluid around the brain doesn’t drain on its own, and the only treatment is to have a shunt put in.
The diagnosis explained why Makenzie struggled to eat and why her eyes always looked down. Doctors said she needed brain surgery immediately.
“They were admitting us right away,” Kathy Memolo said. “That was really scary. My 5-week-old baby (was having surgery), and we thought we were just going in for a test. Then we had to get my mom to go over to stay with my other daughter while all this was happening. It was the scariest couple of weeks of our lives.”
But Makenzie wasn’t able to have surgery.
As doctors did her blood work, they discovered her sodium levels were extremely high, which would put her in danger during surgery. An endocrinologist informed Kathy and Shawn Memolo that Makenzie also had diabetes insipidus; she doesn’t regulate sodium on her own.
After taking medicine for four days to help the condition, Makenzie was cleared for surgery.
“My husband and I both were up the whole night crying, because they couldn’t tell us for sure that everything would be OK,” Kathy Memolo said. “There are babies who die from hydrocephalus, and then adding in the extra complications, there was no way for us to know what her future would look like. … Knowing that she was going to have this device in her head, we just kept looking at her knowing she was never going to look the same again.”
Makenzie’s surgery was successful, and she spent the next few days in the pediatric intensive care unit, because she had challenges coming off anesthesia.
“We would just sit and look at our baby hooked up to all these monitors and things, and our hearts would break for her,” Kathy Memolo said.
Post-surgery, Makenzie continued to struggle to eat and lost more weight, so she got a nasogastric tube at 4 months old. She began feeding therapy, because she lacked the muscle to drink from a bottle.
At 5 months old, Makenzie still wasn’t able to track anything with her eyes, and she began to have seizures. She was diagnosed legally blind and with infantile spasms, which Kathy Memolo put as a “baby version” of epilepsy.
Makenzie still has epilepsy but is now medicated. She had some seizures at the end of last school year, and they adjusted her medication to control it.
At 6 months old, Makenzie started physical therapy. She didn’t have head control and couldn’t sit up, so her neurologist diagnosed her with cerebral palsy.
Fast-forward to today, 6-year-old Makenzie gets her therapy at school through her Individualized Education Program. She attends physical, occupational, speech, vision and behavior therapy.
Through therapy, Makenzie has started to learn to use buttons to communicate her feelings.
She has two buttons attached to her wheelchair. Each button has a different feeling so Makenzie can begin to associate the texture with a meaning. The goal is to increase the number of buttons and give Makenzie a communication board.
“As she gets older, if she doesn’t start talking, that would be a way for her to communicate with us,” Kathy Memolo said.
Despite the conditions Makenzie’s living with, her spirit and sassy personality stays up every day.
“If I put some food on her high chair tray, sometimes she’ll throw it on the floor, and if I say, ‘Makenzie, don’t throw that on the floor,’ she’ll laugh and then do it again,” Kathy Memolo said. “She’s super sassy, and she definitely finds ways to be a defiant child.”
Makenzie loves music, and her family jokes she’ll become a music critic. When a song comes on she doesn’t like, she’ll scream at the top of her lungs. If she likes a song, she’ll start babbling and laughing along with it.
“She loves to eat all sorts of different things, and then she likes physical touch,” Kathy Memolo said. “She likes to be tickled and hugged and smushed.”
She also enjoys having a stuffed animal thrown at her. The family warns Makenzie they’re going to throw it, and she finds the action hilarious. She babbles a lot and makes all sorts of noises — from happy to mad and sad.
Makenzie’s future isn’t clear. The family doesn’t know if she’ll be able to talk. She likely will stay in a wheelchair and always live with her parents.
“We’ve definitely come to a place of accepting and appreciating all the things she can do — that she’s a really happy kid, loves school and she has so much love in her life,” Kathy Memolo said.
The family of four focuses on their quality time together and always makes the most of it because they never know when there will be a medical or financial emergency.
The Memolos are living off one income.
Kathy Memolo is a first-grade teacher at Oakland Charter, and Shawn Memolo stays home as Makenzie’s “on-call caretaker.”
Shawn Memolo is there for all of Makenzie’s needs. He takes her to doctor appointments a couple of times per month. She gets sick more frequently than other kids and he stays at home to care for her.
To make extra cash, Shawn Memolo does resale while the rest of the family is at school, but he always stays within 15 minutes of Makenzie in case of an emergency — like the time she had a seizure at school.
“He had to get to the school quickly so he could go in the ambulance with her to the hospital,” Kathy Memolo said.
Shawn Memolo’s mother moved in four years ago to help with meals and bathing when the craziness of the school year is upon them. She also helps out with paying the mortgage of the home.
Every morning, Shawn Memolo drops the family off at work in their one vehicle. They were given the minivan two-and-a-half years ago from friends, because they needed a vehicle to fit Makenzie’s wheelchair.
At the end of July, the family was thrown a curveball when the van broke down and they were told it needed a new engine — something they couldn’t afford. They looked at what vehicles they could afford.
A sedan would be cheaper, but it wouldn’t fit a wheelchair. A used minivan with 150,000 miles on it had a monthly payment of $500.
“We don’t have that,” Kathy Memolo said.
They dream of having an accessible van, allowing Makenzie to stay in her wheelchair during the transitions in and out of the vehicle. As she’s become older and heavier, it’s hard on Kathy Memolo to lift Makenzie into and out of the car seat, and it’s difficult for Makenzie to constantly be moved around.
“Just having that accessible van will make our lives easier, and it’ll make her life easier, too,” Kathy Memolo said.
A family friend heard about their situation and asked Kathy and Shawn if she could start a GoFundMe for them. They weren’t sure how the GoFundMe would take off and told the friend to go for it, and a little bit of money would be so helpful.
“The amount of people who have donated and when I look at the names, there’s people I don’t even know,” Kathy Memolo said. “They just know somebody who knows us, they heard our story and felt for us.”
Dozens of people and organizations, including the Windermere Police Foundation, have donated to the GoFundMe, which has raised $8,600 so far to support the family.
“My husband and I talk about it every day that we’re just overwhelmed with gratitude for all of the people that have reached out to support us and the posts that people have put on Facebook, and things that talk about how much I meant to their family as their child’s teacher,” Kathy Memolo said.
Kathy Memolo has received messages from former students and their parents and loves hearing about how they’re doing, no matter how long they’ve been out of her classroom.
