A Columbia woman who has battled illness all her life is currently pursuing brain surgery to remove a tumor and has reached out to the community to help her afford to save her life.

Danielle Bergmann moved to Columbia when she was 7, and has lived in the community ever since.

She started school in the community at Parkview Elementary, spending some time at Immaculate Conception Catholic School before graduating from Columbia High School. Bergmann was heavily involved in school theatre for a number of years.

She attended Southwestern Illinois College for a while before starting up online classes with Oregon State University.

Bergmann’s focus during her higher education has been biology, and her work has likewise centered around animals – whether volunteering at the World Bird Sanctuary or filling in several different positions at the St. Louis Zoo.

Now 28, Bergmann said she’s had a passion for animals all her life, thanks primarily to the fact both her parents have veterinary backgrounds and even got to know each other thanks to an injured owl.

“I had spent my life around animals and pets,” Bergmann said. “We had taken care of wildlife here and there growing up. I basically found myself back there. I wanted to volunteer with animals. I’ve known since I was 2 that I wanted to work with animals.”

Bergmann’s mother, Meg, also spoke to her daughter’s love of animals.

“She’s always loved animals,” Meg said. “The whole family is a big animal-loving family… Her first dream since she was very little, since our very first fish tank, she wanted to go into marine biology and conservation.”

Bergmann recalled how she started volunteering with animals as a teenager, working with birds, snakesand bats as well as an armadillo.

At one point, she heard the zoo was having a job fair, and though she didn’t expect much, she visited only to report to her mother that they had asked for her bank info.

Interested in working with either sea lions or stingrays, she started at the zoo by working various attractions, selling tickets and working the back of the train before reaching a supervisor position, though she always wanted to work with the animals directly.

It was at this time she moved from SWIC to an online university, and with the freer schedule, she applied for and received a new position.

“I think it was 2018, I applied to the education department, and that’s where I’ve been ever since,” Bergmann said. “It’s my favorite thing I think I’ve ever done. I do work with the sting-rays now. They’re some of my favorite individuals in the whole world, those little fish.”

Bergmann said she’s also done a range of other work in her position at the zoo, working in other habitats, speaking with guests and doing tours and other programs.

With a number of years spent doing what she’s essentially considered her dream job, Bergmann has since had to step away as health problems have worsened dramatically in recent years.

“That’s my purpose here on Earth, I truly believe,” Bergmann said. “When I got sick, it kind of took away from that, so I’d like to get better and keep dedicating my time towards it.”

As Bergmann said, she’s always had health problems of some kind, with things getting particularly bad in high school, though she was able to begin managing her great deal of symptoms around this time as well.

“When I got older, especially around high school, they started to really look into stuff more diagnostically,” Bergmann said. “They started to learn more things, like I had some weird allergy stuff going on, I had some weird breathing stuff going on… Eventually, I got what I would say is management. Management of multiple diagnoses, management of chronic pain and chronic illness.”

She noted how this management has been, in itself, a full-time job for her.

Though she was able to manage her health problems for a while in part thanks to occasional accommodations at work that became more and more necessary over the past few years, things got significantly worse some time ago.

As Bergmann explained, soon after lockdown at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, she began to feel a severe amount of stress, though she never suffered from COVID herself.

She began to gain weight quite abruptly, also having difficulty walking and suffering from other abnormal issues that ultimately led to her losing grip on the health management that had already been difficult to handle.

What followed was a lengthy struggle with the healthcare system as she researched her symptoms and visited doctor after doctor to try to get answers about her health, facing long wait times for just about every appointment.

She found herself suffering from postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome or POTS, leading to her dealing with frequent bouts of fainting. Bergmann also learned more about her allergy disorder.

She wound up looking into endocrinology as she encountered the idea something might be wrong with her hormone levels.

This then led to her discovering she has an excess of cortisol – a hormone impacting stress, inflammation, blood pressure and other functions – though it took more time to figure out why.

After a less-than-productive appointment to diagnose the problem in St. Louis, she pursued Dr. Theodore Friedman in Los Angeles, Meg giving inheritance money from her father in order to pay for her daughter’s appointment.

Through labs and, primarily, a particular MRI, she discovered a pituitary microadenoma in her brain, a tumor pushing against her hormone center.

Though the problem was identified, it was not over. As Bergmann said, doctors in St. Louis refused to do the surgery to remove the tumor that would fix her cortisol levels, saying it was impossible to do so.

She has thus decided to pursue treatment at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Austin, Texas, where the surgery will be performed, though the location of treatment has also proved to be a problem.

Though Bergmann said her insurance coverage is decent, she explained that issues with the Affordable Care Act in Texas have left her having to pay for the treatment that is needed to save her life out of her own pocket.

As she explained on the GoFundMe page she started to pay for the procedure from a wheelchair to the appointment in L.A. and many other costs and hardships, she feels she has already asked plenty of her family and has thus turned to crowdfunding to help her pay for the operation.

The overall cost of the operation, per the GoFundMe, is over $100,000, with the surgery costing $96,443 and the hospital requesting $67,510 of that up-front.

Further costs include the trip there, pre-op appointment and the staggering number of other costs that are likely to accumulate as she continues to negotiate the healthcare industry.

On the GoFundMe page, Bergmann has written plenty about her experiences and the toll her health problems have had on her, with monetary costs suffered by her and her family, friendships being strained or broken and the work she’s so passionate about being put on hold as she gets through each day.

Bergmann also spoke about her time dealing with doctors who have often been more hurtful than helpful.

“It’s been a lot of not only physical anguish but mental anguish as well,” Bergmann said. “There’s a lot of medical gaslighting that goes on sometimes when someone doesn’t know what’s wrong with you and it’s their task to fix you. You can start feeling like it’s somehow your fault or you’re crazy, not really sick. I kind of carried that burden for many years, and it affected things like friendships and my family, my work.”

Meg also spoke about what it’s been like standing alongside her daughter throughout this struggle.

She spoke about having to watch as Bergmann dealt with serious illness even at a young age, and though she felt tremendous pride in her daughter as she saw success following her passion and working at the zoo, she also hurt as she began to come home each day absolutely exhausted and without any energy to spare.

“It definitely has an impact on a parent when your kids hurt,” Meg said. “You hope for the best of everything for them your whole life and their whole lives, and we were sorta taken aback a bit when she started getting sick when she was smaller.”

She further emphasized how devastating it’s been to see Bergmann go through what she has over the past few years, voicing her hopes that no one else have to deal with what they have.

With her surgery set to take place this Friday, Bergmann’s GoFundMe campaign as of Tuesday evening stands at $46,364 of its $97,000 goal.

Those wishing to donate can do so at gofund.me/adf077a9.

Though with still just over half of the goal to meet, Bergmann voiced tremendous gratitude for those in the community who have offered support.

“I am overwhelmed,” Bergmann said. “I am so overwhelmed and thankful beyond what I can express. I am not normally a very emotional person, and it’s hard for me, but when I started the GoFundMe, I was very afraid to ask for help, and I told my mom that I didn’t think it was going to be that successful… People from all walks of life, my past, present and even strangers were just absolutely touching my heart and doing everything they could to help me out. I think that my viewpoint on the world changed for the better quite a bit through this GoFundMe and through the community.”

One friend of Bergmann’s to offer support is Marybeth Babcock, known for her involvement in community and school theatre throughout Monroe County.

Babcock recalled how Bergmann was one of her many theatre kids through the years, playing Amaryllis in her first Columbia production of “The Music Man” back in 2007.

She spoke fondly of Bergmann, remembering her health struggles and bemoaning the issues she is now facing with healthcare.

“Anybody should be able to get a lifesaving surgery if they need it,” Babcock said. “I know they’ve moved in every which direction to try to get this to happen… I feel like we have a really tight-knit community in the theatre in Monroe County, and I needed to be a little bit of a voice for her.”

Looking to the future, Bergmann said there is hope that the surgery to remove the tumor could alleviate or reverse a number of problems she’s dealt with over the years, though she only knows for certain it will address the cortisol issues that are threatening her life.

With surgery this week and hopeful recovery through Christmas and beyond, she and her family are eager to see her return to her passion.

“My goal as her mom is to get her back to what she was when she was able to walk around at the zoo,” Meg said.