Health
Mid-West Family’s 24-hour Radiothon helping kids and their families at Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals
Over the next two days, Mid-West Family and Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals are once again teaming up to rally community support for another 24-hour radiothon.
The goal is to raise funds, which stay local, to support CMN Hospitals. This funding helps provide critical life-saving treatments, innovative research and financial assistance for families in Gundersen’s 25-county area.
From 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. Thursday and Friday Mid-West Family stations Z93, 95.7 the Rock, and KQ98, plus Around River City, will broadcast from Gundersen in La Crosse stories of CMN heroes and their families as part of the radiothon.
HOW TO DONATE
Go online / Call (608) 784-KIDS (5437) / Text: CMNKIDS to 51555
“I am quite awestruck when people come up to me and tell me about their experience with CMN hospitals,” Gundersen’s Abby Ryan said on WIZM’s La Crosse Talk. “I always (think), it was fantastic because of my family’s experience. But it is so cathartic to see and hear these stories of how we, on a day-to-day basis, are impacting families and their children.”
Ryan, who spent some of her childhood at CMN Hospitals, knows first hand the experience these local kids are going through, and you’ll hear stories from this year’s CMN Heroes, including:
- Andrew Bell, 14, diagnosed with autism at 3
- Luther Hoff, 5, diagnosed with cytomegalovirus
- Charlie Kinneberg, 5, diagnosed with bilateral choanal atresia
- Zari Gorham Hoopingarner, multiple diagnosis
- Liliana Hedrick, 15, diagnosed with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia
“We really want to have people participate and hear the stories of the families that are impacted by what CMN hospitals really has to offer,” CMN’s Abby Ryan said, “and all of the different things like medical equipment that CMN hospitals can fund at our local healthcare facilities.”
Ryan added that the donations raised help purchase everything from gas and gift cards to equipment the hospitals need, including what’s called a “panda warmer,” which has, in this case, a unique story.
“Darren, who did the maintenance on the (panda warmer) to make sure it was working well, his wife went into labor a few months later, and their child was one of the first children to use the panda warmer,” Ryan said. “Oh, my gosh. It is an unbelievable story.”
Ryan also talked about other items that simply go to help keep kids’ minds off things, while they’re undergoing treatment that no child should have to go through.
“Just recently in our pediatric department, we were able to fund a piece of equipment called a vecta, which is like a bubble machine, essentially — but I’m really downplaying what it actually is,” she said. “When you are getting poked and prodded, or going through a procedure as a 7 year old, sometimes as a 3 year old, and you don’t know really what’s going on, something to distract you, a sensory machine like that is so important for the healthcare workers to be able to do their job while simultaneously not traumatizing the child.”
