Licensed professional counselor & speaker

Meet Cassie Carrigan

I use my expertise, personal experiences, and all that I’ve learned to encourage and connect with the healthcare providers who work so hard to provide the best care possible for their patients and families.

The Carrigan Family Story

In 2015, we had our first daughter, Adleigh, and a short eighteen months later, we had our first son, Ryker. Both pregnancies went according to plan and we were overjoyed with our two babies both in diapers!

In 2018, we lost our daughter, Radiance, at 21 weeks gestation. I had a subchorionic hemorrhage on my placenta, which induced labor and broke my water. She lived for about an hour.

In 2019, we had our son, Caleb. My pregnancy with him was a roller coaster of good news and bad news. He spent all his 28 days of life in the NICU and CICU. Caleb’s issues included GI blockages (which he had two surgeries to fix), a heart defect, urinary problems, and low oxygen levels. While on ECMO and the day before he died, we received Caleb’s whole exome test results, which showed a gene deletion related to a fatal lung disease called Alveolar Capillary Dysplasia with Misalignment of the Pulmonary Veins.

In 2020, we had our beautiful, double rainbow baby, Finlee Hope. She is beautiful, healthy, and perfect. She is a gift. We are forever grateful for her life.

One of my new assignments as a loss mom is to walk alongside other parents who have lost children, and support the medical community through encouragement and graciously offering the human perspective. Read below for more specific ways I could serve you.

Recognition & Speaking Events

  • Cassie serves on the Family Advisory Council at Children's Hospital Colorado.

  • Winner of the 2023 Patient Family Experience Award voted on by Children's Hospital Leaders.

  • Cassie speaks as a regular participant of the NICU Residency Training Program at St. Francis Hospital in Colorado Springs.

  • Guest Speaker at the annual Pediatric Pulmonary Hypertension Network Conference in 2023.

  • Panel Speaker for first year medical students about challenging experiences in healthcare at University of Colorado Denver in 2022.

How Cassie Can Serve Your Hospital

Licensed Professional Counselor

I am a Licensed Professional Counselor and can offer my expertise around mental health. I can speak to the need for healthcare providers to mentally and emotionally process their work, as well as implement quality self-care. I can also speak to the mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual toll patients and their families experience as they journey through sickness, disease or even death.

Encourage to Healthcare Providers

In an especially difficult time to be in healthcare due to the complications of the pandemic, I want to use my personal experience to encourage healthcare providers. I can speak to the value of their work and the life changing impact they have on their patients and patient’s families.

Foster Relationships

Caleb’s doctors and nurses had an incredibly positive impact on our family. They knew our son in an intimate way and fought for him right alongside of us. Not only did they care for Caleb, but they also cared for us, and included us in his care. In speaking about our personal story, I can help foster these types of meaningful relationships between hospital staff, healthcare providers, the patients, and their families.

Knowledge of ACD

If helpful for the medical community, I can speak about Caleb’s lung disease-the FOXF1 gene connected to Alveolar Capillary Dysplasia with Misalignment of Pulmonary Veins, and the symptoms and signs of ACDMPV.

I welcome any opportunity to share about our son’s life, death, and lung disease in any setting that could be helpful for patients, their families, healthcare providers, donors, and hospital staff.