The story of Katerina
My name is Katerina Ronga. I am a 38 year old woman, mother of an 8 year old boy and Senior Quality Manager at the largest telco in Greece (OTE Group of companies / DT Group).
I was recentrly diagnosed with a brain pituitary tumor of 1,6 cm that has been defined as rare by the National Institute of Health medical center in Washinghton DC. This tumor managed to get unnoticed after a lot of meetings with doctors in Greece for more than 4 years without cure and without a medical prescription of what to do. I was very lucky to have been accepted by the NIH in a pituitary rumor research program / protocol (last May 2018) which have managed to measure it, though due to rareness (no other in the world) I am under continuous monthly monitoring to define next steps of treatment.
After my experience, and the hard journey, I am continuing normal life, my work, my career and despite of the difficulty due to the symptoms of the tumour I am trying to live a normal life. I know what the difficulties are and how difficult is for someone to live this life and I have decided to help people with the same problem in Greece. Here in Greece everything is scattered and we need a lot of work to do in order to help the community. I am trying to create an activity in Greece to help people using my experience in the consulting field. In addition, I would love to give people and doctors a hand to help the community to help face rare diseases.