"Please God let me die today." This was the same prayer Gerry Radano started each day of her life with for over 10 years. This ominous request was due to the fact that Gerry suffered from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), a neurological brain disease that affects nearly seven million Americans. The compulsions of this disease caused Radano to wash her hands over 200 times a day, constantly change her clothes, experience repeated panic attacks, and empty a can of Lysol on everything she came in contact with to avoid the germs that she was convinced were contaminating her.

Gerry's storybook life as a flight attendant who traveled the world, an accomplished real estate entrepreneur, and happily married mother of two was interrupted overnight by OCD. She lived the kind of mental torture normally only seen in movies like The Aviator - she was in three psychiatric hospitals, tried every OCD medication on the market, had countless hours of therapy, lost her career, and nearly lost her marriage. Desperate for relief, she underwent an experimental brain procedure known as Gamma Knife Surgery. This operation, Radano's relentless determination, and unwavering faith pulled her thru. Now she's using that same fierce resolve to rebuild her life.

Today, all of her OCD symptoms are gone. Gerry currently lives in Westchester, NY with her husband and two children. She went back to school to get her MSW, graduating at the top of her class from Fordham University. She has written a book, Contaminated, My Journey Out of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder to show how OCD took her mind, but not her spirit. Gerry Radano's goal now is to travel the country telling her story to various organizations including hospitals, colleges, and other mental-health forums to let the clinician, as well as the client, know that mental illness doesn't have to be a life sentence and to raise awareness of the scientific research and technology that gave her back her life.

Ms. Radano's experiences living with OCD, and the very specialized brain surgery that saved her life, have been featured in The Chicago Tribune Magazine. Radano is one of the few patients to have made a complete recovery due to Gamma Knife Surgery, making her a highly sought-after speaker among medical professionals and researchers in this field. Her on-camera interviews are used as teaching tools for doctors and students alike.