Victoria Jackson doesn't need this weekend's retail sales to satisfy her shopping list. She can afford to spend, with her lucrative cosmetics business and a husband with a billion-dollar infomercial marketing firm.
They've already put $15 million toward their most important holiday gift, one that can't be wrapped or put under a Christmas tree, because it's not something from the mall or a boutique.
It's the quest for a clean bill of health for their 16-year-old daughter, who suffers from a rare, debilitating disease that has been -- until now -- virtually unknown and ignored by the medical community.
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It's easy to begrudge the fortunes of the rich. I admit to a moment of eye-rolling when I first heard of this millionaire mom trying to buy her daughter's way out of an incurable disease.
Then I thought of all the nights I spent hovering over my ailing kids, worrying about headaches and stomach pains that turned out to be garden-variety illnesses. I imagined listening to a doctor tell me that one of those aches might mean my daughter would lose her ability to walk or see.
That's what happened to Jackson last year, when a pain in her daughter's eye landed them in a neurologist's office. The symptoms -- eye pain, fading colors, loss of vision in one eye -- were diagnosed as neuromyelitis optica, a disorder known as NMO that would have terrified Jackson if she had known then what it is.
"I was in 'mom denial,' " she told me. "I didn't have any idea of the seriousness of the world I was entering . . . until I heard that in four years, my daughter could be blind or paralyzed. That we could lose her."
Jackson went from denial into overdrive.
"We spent spring break at the Mayo Clinic," she said, seeking advice from one of the few physicians who has extensively studied the disorder. She told that doctor, "You're doing research. I've got a checkbook. You and I are going to get to know each other."
Jackson is blunt and unaccustomed to failure. Sometimes it takes a desperate parent with deep pockets to bypass convention and jump-start medical advances.
Like the mother in Minnesota who sank six years of profits from her successful tech firms into finding new ways to treat autism. She's convinced that the nonprofit Hyperbaric Treatment Center she funded has improved life for her autistic son and his classmates.
