Karena Buddoo, of Bridgeport, is only 23 years old but she’s endured a lifetime of trauma. In 2022, she was diagnosed with the rare and aggressive immune system disease called Guillain-Barré syndrome.
Fighting back was part of an ordeal that took Buddoo from Yale-New Haven Hospital to Gaylord Rehabilitation Hospital in Wallingford.
Buddoo was paralyzed from the chest down as a result of the disease as a ventilator kept her breathing, but slowly she began to make steps each day.
“I am a very strong-minded person, so I knew I was going to get better,” Buddoo said.
Getting better took months of intense rehab and working with the team at Gaylord. During that road to recovery, Buddoo found a new career path: she decided she wanted to join the hospital staff.
Just recently, Buddoo became a patient care technician at Gaylord Hospital and is now working alongside the team that helped to save her.
“The people here have been so amazing that I wanted to be a part of that, so I want others to feel how I felt when I came here," Buddoo said.
Georgette Alamo, Buddoo's mother and a registered nurse at Gaylord, said, "I tell her don’t be shy to tell your story, your story is going to help others."
Tammy Maher, one of Buddoo's respiratory therapists during her stay at Gaylord, said, “It is her comeback, she was our patient and now she’s working with her patients, and you can ask for nothing better.”
Buddoo is still fighting to get back to 100% and, down the road, she has designs on following in her mother’s footsteps and becoming a registered nurse.
"It’s rewarding, this was like a marathon, but I never gave up, I kept pushing," Buddoo said.
