Lisa Burke: GoFundMe campaign launched for student who suffered brain hemorrhage on spring break in Mexico
ASHEVILLE, NORTH CAROLINA: A GoFundMe drive is being organized for Lisa Burke, a North Carolina college senior who suffered a brain hemorrhage during her spring break in Mexico, where she underwent emergency surgery to remove part of her skull before being flown back to the US.
Burke, is a native of Asheville, and a senior at the University of Georgia. She went on a trip to Cabo San Lucas with a group of friends, where she started having an uncomfortable headache, which she complained about to her friends before breakfast on March 10, 2023.
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'They couldn’t wake her up'
"She started to have a headache, so she said, ‘I’m going to go back to the room to lay down and take some medicine,’" family friend Jennifer Ritter told WSB-TV. "Her friends went back later to check on her, but they couldn’t wake her up," she said. Burke was rushed to a hospital, where she was diagnosed with an arteriovenous malformation, a tangle of blood vessels that irregularly connect arteries and veins, disrupting blood and oxygen flow.
Ritter also told the news outlet that Burke apparently had the abnormality since birth. Burke underwent emergency surgery to remove part of her skull and was placed on life support.
Family friend Jennifer Ritter organized the GoFundMe drive to garner help for Burke so that she can be treated and brought back home. The drive was able to raise more than $138,000, with the help of which Burke was placed on a medical flight on Tuesday, March 14, 2023, and returned to the US, where she was transported to Jacksonville, Florida, where her mother lives.
Currently, Burke is being treated at the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville. According to her mother, Laura McKeithan, she is now breathing on her own but still uses a ventilator to keep her airway clear.
'The doctors there were so caring'
McKeithan also talked about the doctors in Mexico; according to a report by the NY Post, she said, "The doctors there were so caring and really wanted to get her back to the States because they felt that is where she was going to have the best care." She also added that her daughter has a long road ahead to recovery. "(She is) nothing short of a miracle. We are told to take things one day at a time and not get our hopes too high, but to have plenty of hope," the mother said.