Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals radiothon Friday can help Gundersen’s NICU with much needed equipment

Think about what 2 pounds would feel like in your hand.

Now think about those 2 pounds being a baby.

That’s what nurses are responsible for all day, every day in Gundersen Health System’s 18 “bed” Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) in La Crosse.

The first day of the Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals radiothon with Mid-West Family brought a lot of stories from kids and their families battling conditions and diseases.

Those stories from the Gundersen lobby continue from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. Friday, as volunteers, every hour, come in to work the phones and help raise money for these families through Children’s Miracle Network (CMN) Hospitals. 

CHILDREN’S MIRACLE NETWORK RADIOTHON
DAY 2

From 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. 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 

This funding is used in multiple ways from very simple things like gift cards and toys that help keep families stable and kids occupied. But, it can get much more complex with hospital equipment — though, sometimes, the names are pretty simple.

There’s this $40,000 thing called the Giraffe that’s used in Gundersen’s NICU. It looks like an incubator for premature babies and was on display at Thursday’s radiothon — no “Mable” isn’t a real baby.

“CMN is awesome,” NICU nurse practitioner Amanda Dahl said. “They help donate a lot of things that are needed for kids with disabilities (like special OT equipment for at home) and they help us with needed equipment in the NICU (like a new giraffe). “

Other equipment isn’t so simply named — the ambulatory electroencephalography or aEEG — but it’s one that CMN Hospitals is trying to help Gundersen’s NICU get, according to Anna Halweg, the clinical care manager.

The aEEG, which costs around $70,000, helps monitor seizure activity in babies.

“Right now, we have to transfer out all those babies and separate those families to Madison or Rochester,” Halweg said. “If we get this equipment, we’ll be able to keep them here and serve them better.”

Halweg also spoke of other ways CMN Hospitals has helped her NICU. 

“Most recently they’ve helped us fund our neonatal transport team,” she said. “And that now includes a registered nurse and a respiratory therapist. 

“This enables us to better serve the community with results that we have now doubled our neonatal transports and achieved a record-breaking year. So that’s pretty awesome!”

Getting an aEEG would add to those results on a job that’s quite fragile — if you think again about that 2 pounds, and having to airlift him or her from one hospital to another.

“They’re very sensitive and tiny patients,” Halweg said of the premies, “so when you transfer them, they might not always be stable to transport.”

And depending on that baby’s delicate condition, the NICU team always has to be ready.

“We go by ground or air,” Halweg said. “We can either transport patients out of our hospital to a higher level of care or we can go and get patients from surrounding communities and bring them in, if they need higher levels of care.”

The radiothon continue from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. Friday on Mid-West Family stations 95.7 the Rock, Z93 and KQ98, as kids, deemed “local heroes,” and their families continue to talk about their experiences and help raise money for CMN Hospitals.