Family's Struggles Help Raise Awareness For Riley Hospital
July 28, 2016 at 4:25 p.m.
By David [email protected]
A.C. and Erin McCray had three sons who needed care at Riley over the past five years.
They will be one of the families who will share their story Thursday and Friday during Lake City Rock 107.3 WRSW’s Third Annual Riley Radio Days to benefit the Kosciusko County Riley Kids Fund and Riley Hospital for Children.
A.C. shared his family’s story Monday with the Times-Union.
Shawn
“Really the story starts back in 2009. My wife was pregnant with our third child, our son Shawn. And he was sort of a surprise. We had a few surprise children,” A.C. said.
When Shawn was born, he couldn’t breathe. The doctors didn’t know what Shawn’s problem was.
“Basically, when he came out they put him right in the incubator and started giving him the mask to pump air to him,” A.C. said.
As they were trying to figure out Shawn’s problem, A.C. looked over at the incubator. “One of the nurses just moved out of the way and they were still pumping but they stopped pumping for whatever reason for just a second and his head just kind of flopped to the side. And that was the first time I looked my son in the eyes, and I thought, ‘There’s no way he’s going to make it. There’s something they’re not telling us,’” he said.
The hospital staff eventually got Shawn stable. He was transported to Memorial Hospital in South Bend, and then from there went to Riley in Indianapolis because he had a dermoid in the back of his throat which caused a blockage in his airway. A dermoid is a type of a benign tumor.[[In-content Ad]]“Not being able to breathe caused him to have a couple of strokes, but nothing super major that we knew about at the time,” A.C. recalled. “So they got him stable and took him to Riley. When they said, ‘We’re going to take him to Riley,’ we knew nothing about the hospital except that’s where the really sick kids go. So we thought, ‘He’s done. We’re going to have to go down there and come back and bury our child.’ Because that was our understanding of Riley that we had at the time.”
After arriving at Riley, A.C. said the staff explained everything to them step by step. They answered all of the McCrays’ questions and removed the dermoid fairly easily. That’s when doctors realized Shawn had hydrocephalus caused by the strokes. He couldn’t drain brain fluid properly, so the Riley doctors put a shunt in his head.
“That’s surgery where they’re inserting something in his head basically, so that kind of scared us. But again, they were with us every step of the way. They answered every dumb question we had,” A.C. said.
The McCrays got through that, spending about a month down there total. He had some complications when the shunt was put in, but they were able to bring him home.
“It got infected almost immediately somehow,” A.C. said. “So we had to bring him back down. Again, they took care of us and made sure we were taken care of and knew what was going on. We got out of that and were like, ‘Oh, it’s great that we’re never going to have to go through this again. We have to go down there for appointments, but that’s it.’”
Ash
On Dec. 26, 2010, A.C. and Erin found out Erin was pregnant again with another son, Ash.
“When they found out she was pregnant with him, they said something’s not quite right with his heart. We can hear that in the ultrasound and we want you to go to a specialist. They sent us to Fort Wayne and the specialist looked at it and did their tests and said, ‘Well, we want you to start seeing a specialist down at Riley. We want you to get checked out and you’re probably going to have to deliver down there,’” A.C. said.
Doctors at Riley diagnosed Ash with Hydroplastic Left Heart Syndrome. Half of his heart wasn’t functioning as it should. The other half was functioning, but not well enough to allow Ash to live for a long period of time without surgery.
Ash was born in March 2011. Erin saw the baby but didn’t get to hold him as Ash was taken immediately and put on ventilation and then transported to Riley.
In the first two weeks of his life, Ash had several heart surgeries. “They corrected it enough to where he would grow and get stronger, and when he was 7 months old, they scheduled him for a full bypass surgery to do the first part of the major correction,” A.C. said.
Every month, they traveled to Indianapolis to see the doctor. Seven months went by “way too fast,” he said. Ash grew but was underweight.
When Ash was 7 months, they traveled to Riley for the surgery. On the day of the surgery, there was a filtration error with the ventilation in the operating room, so the McCrays had to wait two more days. For a surgery that big, A.C. said waiting two more days was terrifying.
“They got us in and did the surgery. At the end of the surgery, Ash was put on an Ecmo machine, which basically gave his heart a chance to start working properly, give him a chance to rest,” he said.
After about a week, since Ash was doing well, the doctor sent Erin and A.C. home so they could spend some time to rest and be with their other children. The doctor told them to come back on Monday and they’d work to get Ash home by Friday. Everything seemed to be going great.
At 3:30 p.m. Sunday, the phone rang. Erin answered it and her face went completely pale. She handed the phone to A.C.
“They said there’s been some complications, how quickly can you get here?” he recalled. “They were actually thinking of getting us a police escort to zoom down there so we had no idea of what was going on other than he had some heart failure. His heart had stopped and they were having trouble getting it restarted.”
After getting their other children situated at their grandparents’ house, Erin and A.C. rushed to Indianapolis. Ash’s heart had stopped. It took the hospital staff about 40 minutes to restart it, but Ash didn’t get enough blood to his brain, which caused some brain damage.
“They compared it to a child who had severe cerebral palsy. So I said, ‘We’ll get him through this, he’ll be in a wheelchair, probably won’t be able to function very well.’ We thought that was not what we had hoped for, but God gives everyone something different for a reason so it’ll be OK,” A.C. said.
That night they went to their hotel room, though they didn’t sleep much. Early the next morning, they called to check and asked if everything was OK. About an hour later, they got to the hospital and the doctor stopped them to talk.
“We went into this little room and they said, ‘He’s had a brain hemorrhage. There’s pretty much no brain function and basically the machines are what’s keeping him alive,” A.C. stated.
The doctors told them they had to make a decision on what they wanted to do.
“That’s a position no parent wants to be in,” A.C. said. “But we knew if there was nothing that could be done, we wanted them to tell us, because we didn’t want him to suffer. And at that point on Sunday the doctor said we’ve still got options, we can still treat him different ways. But, (by Monday) the doctor said, ‘You told me to tell you when there’s nothing left we can do, and this is it. There’s nothing left we can do except to make him comfortable and the decision is left up to you.’ ”
With all the information they had, the McCrays decided to take Ash off the machines.
“We talked to him for a little while,” A.C. said as tears welled up in his eyes. “It was about noon. And the doctors said, ‘We’ll go ahead and pull the (plugs).’ They (unhooked) all the machines except for his pain medicine. They wrapped him up and handed him to my wife. Before they (disconnected life support) they said it should be a matter of minutes and then he’d be gone. Fifteen minutes later, he was still fighting. His heart rate wasn’t steady but it was going.”
The doctor told the McCrays he never saw anything like it before. Ash should have passed away by then.
“I looked at him. I said, ‘Ash, I know you can see Jesus. I know you’re worried about Mommy and Daddy, but what you need to do is just run to Jesus. Jump into his arms. It’s OK. Mommy and Daddy will be OK. You don’t need to worry about us. And at that very moment I finished the sentence, the kid who had no brain function; he should have for all intents and purposes died 15 minutes before that; opened his eyes and looked at me. He smiled and he died,” A.C. said.
“That was probably the worst day of our lives.”
When they got home that day, A.C. collapsed. His brother, standing behind him, caught him in his arms.
They got through it, but Ash’s funeral was the second toughest day of A.C.’s life. A.C. was allowed to seal off Ash’s casket. He carried him to and from the hearse and lowered him into the ground.
“No parent should ever have to do that to their kid. But through it all, as terrible as it was, the doctors and the nurses – everybody at Riley – were still there for us,” A.C. said.
After Ash died, the doctor told A.C. he made the right choice. The doctor and rest of the staff were just as upset as the McCrays were.
“They don’t like to see the kids go,” A.C. said. “It affected everyone even to the lower level at Riley.”
He added, “I wish that was the end of our Riley story, but it’s not. At that point I said the same thing in my head: Boy, I am glad we’re done with Riley except for the minor appointments for our other son.”
Erik
A.C. started working at Lake City Rock 107.3 WRSW in 2011 as a board operator.
In 2012, the McCrays found out about Riley Radio Days, which was really exciting for them, though they were still hesitant about sharing their story because it was hard to relive it.
“Everyone grieves differently. And sharing the story, to me, was not something I had thought of. I was like, ‘This is our personal stuff. No one cares about our child who didn’t make it.’ At least that’s what I thought of in my head,” A.C. said.
Erin came in to help with Riley Radio Days, and the McCrays ended up sharing their story on the radio. Erin was more talkative that first year then A.C. was.
“It was strangely cathartic,” he said, though he didn’t understand it.
In 2013, A.C. was working nights at WRSW. They asked him to come in and host the midday show for Riley Radio Days because of his experience. That threw him off a little bit. He was still nervous about sharing his family’s story and hearing other families’ stories.
Riley Radio Days raised $53,000 last year. He started understanding why sharing his story was important and why people cared.
A week to the day after saying on the radio that he was glad they were done with trips to Riley, Shawn had a seizure and was taken instantly to Riley. They found out he had a seizure disorder on top of everything else, probably caused by the placement of the shunt.
After a few months of going to and from Riley and getting everything figured out there, A.C. figured again he was done with Riley except for the regular appointments.
Their oldest son, Erik, had just been started on ADHD medicine. Through his medicine, the doctors were able to determine that his blood pressure had raised and Erik had a problem, so he had to go to Riley.
“I remember when they found that out, I just went into the panic mode because all I heard the doctor say was ‘possible heart problem,’ ‘needs to go to Riley,’ ‘may have to have surgery,’” A.C. said.
After everything else they went through, A.C was just a mess.
He went to go see Mike Bergen, one of the founders of the Kosciusko County Riley Kids Fund, and told him he needed financial help. Bergen gave him the number for the social worker at the Health Center in the K21 Health Pavilion who can access the Riley Fund.
He met with Laura Cooper, the social worker.
“Never once was it, ‘Well, you need help, I’m better than you.’ She was right there on my level saying, ‘You need help, we’re going to help you and we’re going to make sure you’re able to be there to make sure your son gets the treatment he needs to get better,’” A.C. said.
The help provided the McCrays a way to get down to Riley. Once down there, the hospital determined Erik had a heart disease. His blood vessels were narrowing so he wasn’t getting blood to the lower parts of his body. He did have blood vessels branch out so he was able to get along as long as he had. They had to operate. If that operation didn’t work out, Erik would need a full bypass.
Date for the surgery was set for the end of July 2013.
“His surgeon was the same surgeon Ash had. He remembered exactly who we are. All the doctors who had dealt with Ash, Erik had quite a few of the same doctors and they all remembered us,” A.C. said.
Erik’s surgery was a success. His blood vessels had branched out enough that it all worked out well. Full recovery was expected.
They went back down to Riley Friday. They were worried about his heart valve, which was malformed, but otherwise Erik was going to be OK. The valve wasn’t causing any problems, and they didn’t expect it would.
Getting Involved
A.C. originally didn’t see a point in telling his family’s story.
It was because of Lake City Rock 107.3 WRSW’s Riley Radio Days that A.C. started talking about their Riley experience and began to understand how it affected others.
The Kosciusko County Riley Kids Fund, held at the Kosciusko County Community Foundation, was founded by Alan Alderfer and Mike Bergen because they recognized need among the families of Kosciusko County whose children are treated at the Riley Hospital for Children.
Bergen said when A.C. began working at the radio station, they didn’t know each other.
“We came in the very first day and there’s this lady kind of hanging around and came up to me and said, ‘We love Riley. If there’s anything we can do to help, let us know.’ I said thank you very much and I didn’t know who it was,” Bergen said. It was Erin, who had specifically came in to help with the radiothon.
Erin and Bergen talked for a little bit and she filled him in on Ash’s story. A.C and Erin ended up telling their story on the air.
“To me it was the most moving story of both days. Since then, obviously A.C. has become an integral part of the radio station and participated in last year’s radiothon, and A.C. and Erin are going to tell their story again this year on Thursday,” Bergen said. “Just a wonderful family and a very moving story.
Stephanie Overbey, Kosciusko County Community Foundation associate director, said the McCrays have been able to benefit from the Riley Kids Fund.
She said the fund does two things. It supports the actual hospice, and also provides financial relief to families of children served at Riley so the stay at Riley isn’t so financially taxing on them.
“Any time a family has a very ill child, it’s a financial disaster. It’s the least of their worries. But the reality is there’s some things insurance doesn’t cover, if you have it. That’s what the fund is there for,” Overbey said.
Both Alderfer and Bergen have children who were served by Riley. While the financial hardship wasn’t as great for them because of their jobs and resources, Overbey stated, they saw many families who literally had nothing left.
“This (fund) provides some cushion for those families,” she said.
“Obviously, this is a fundraising event where we raise money for the fund. But what’s important is that we want to get the word out that help is available if they need it because that’s the other half of this. We can have all the resources in the world but if people don’t know that they’re there then it doesn’t do people any good,” Bergen said.
Families that need help from the K.C. Riley Kids Fund can contact the social worker, Laura Cooper, at the Help Center, located in the K21 Health Pavilion. She helps families access the fund, which is administered by the Kosciusko County Community Foundation. The Help Center number is 574-372-3500.
Thursday and Friday the public has a chance to make a difference in the lives of families in Kosciusko County by calling 574-268-HOPE (4763) or by donating at www.1073wrsw.com/Events/RileyRadioDays2014.aspx
A.C. and Erin McCray had three sons who needed care at Riley over the past five years.
They will be one of the families who will share their story Thursday and Friday during Lake City Rock 107.3 WRSW’s Third Annual Riley Radio Days to benefit the Kosciusko County Riley Kids Fund and Riley Hospital for Children.
A.C. shared his family’s story Monday with the Times-Union.
Shawn
“Really the story starts back in 2009. My wife was pregnant with our third child, our son Shawn. And he was sort of a surprise. We had a few surprise children,” A.C. said.
When Shawn was born, he couldn’t breathe. The doctors didn’t know what Shawn’s problem was.
“Basically, when he came out they put him right in the incubator and started giving him the mask to pump air to him,” A.C. said.
As they were trying to figure out Shawn’s problem, A.C. looked over at the incubator. “One of the nurses just moved out of the way and they were still pumping but they stopped pumping for whatever reason for just a second and his head just kind of flopped to the side. And that was the first time I looked my son in the eyes, and I thought, ‘There’s no way he’s going to make it. There’s something they’re not telling us,’” he said.
The hospital staff eventually got Shawn stable. He was transported to Memorial Hospital in South Bend, and then from there went to Riley in Indianapolis because he had a dermoid in the back of his throat which caused a blockage in his airway. A dermoid is a type of a benign tumor.[[In-content Ad]]“Not being able to breathe caused him to have a couple of strokes, but nothing super major that we knew about at the time,” A.C. recalled. “So they got him stable and took him to Riley. When they said, ‘We’re going to take him to Riley,’ we knew nothing about the hospital except that’s where the really sick kids go. So we thought, ‘He’s done. We’re going to have to go down there and come back and bury our child.’ Because that was our understanding of Riley that we had at the time.”
After arriving at Riley, A.C. said the staff explained everything to them step by step. They answered all of the McCrays’ questions and removed the dermoid fairly easily. That’s when doctors realized Shawn had hydrocephalus caused by the strokes. He couldn’t drain brain fluid properly, so the Riley doctors put a shunt in his head.
“That’s surgery where they’re inserting something in his head basically, so that kind of scared us. But again, they were with us every step of the way. They answered every dumb question we had,” A.C. said.
The McCrays got through that, spending about a month down there total. He had some complications when the shunt was put in, but they were able to bring him home.
“It got infected almost immediately somehow,” A.C. said. “So we had to bring him back down. Again, they took care of us and made sure we were taken care of and knew what was going on. We got out of that and were like, ‘Oh, it’s great that we’re never going to have to go through this again. We have to go down there for appointments, but that’s it.’”
Ash
On Dec. 26, 2010, A.C. and Erin found out Erin was pregnant again with another son, Ash.
“When they found out she was pregnant with him, they said something’s not quite right with his heart. We can hear that in the ultrasound and we want you to go to a specialist. They sent us to Fort Wayne and the specialist looked at it and did their tests and said, ‘Well, we want you to start seeing a specialist down at Riley. We want you to get checked out and you’re probably going to have to deliver down there,’” A.C. said.
Doctors at Riley diagnosed Ash with Hydroplastic Left Heart Syndrome. Half of his heart wasn’t functioning as it should. The other half was functioning, but not well enough to allow Ash to live for a long period of time without surgery.
Ash was born in March 2011. Erin saw the baby but didn’t get to hold him as Ash was taken immediately and put on ventilation and then transported to Riley.
In the first two weeks of his life, Ash had several heart surgeries. “They corrected it enough to where he would grow and get stronger, and when he was 7 months old, they scheduled him for a full bypass surgery to do the first part of the major correction,” A.C. said.
Every month, they traveled to Indianapolis to see the doctor. Seven months went by “way too fast,” he said. Ash grew but was underweight.
When Ash was 7 months, they traveled to Riley for the surgery. On the day of the surgery, there was a filtration error with the ventilation in the operating room, so the McCrays had to wait two more days. For a surgery that big, A.C. said waiting two more days was terrifying.
“They got us in and did the surgery. At the end of the surgery, Ash was put on an Ecmo machine, which basically gave his heart a chance to start working properly, give him a chance to rest,” he said.
After about a week, since Ash was doing well, the doctor sent Erin and A.C. home so they could spend some time to rest and be with their other children. The doctor told them to come back on Monday and they’d work to get Ash home by Friday. Everything seemed to be going great.
At 3:30 p.m. Sunday, the phone rang. Erin answered it and her face went completely pale. She handed the phone to A.C.
“They said there’s been some complications, how quickly can you get here?” he recalled. “They were actually thinking of getting us a police escort to zoom down there so we had no idea of what was going on other than he had some heart failure. His heart had stopped and they were having trouble getting it restarted.”
After getting their other children situated at their grandparents’ house, Erin and A.C. rushed to Indianapolis. Ash’s heart had stopped. It took the hospital staff about 40 minutes to restart it, but Ash didn’t get enough blood to his brain, which caused some brain damage.
“They compared it to a child who had severe cerebral palsy. So I said, ‘We’ll get him through this, he’ll be in a wheelchair, probably won’t be able to function very well.’ We thought that was not what we had hoped for, but God gives everyone something different for a reason so it’ll be OK,” A.C. said.
That night they went to their hotel room, though they didn’t sleep much. Early the next morning, they called to check and asked if everything was OK. About an hour later, they got to the hospital and the doctor stopped them to talk.
“We went into this little room and they said, ‘He’s had a brain hemorrhage. There’s pretty much no brain function and basically the machines are what’s keeping him alive,” A.C. stated.
The doctors told them they had to make a decision on what they wanted to do.
“That’s a position no parent wants to be in,” A.C. said. “But we knew if there was nothing that could be done, we wanted them to tell us, because we didn’t want him to suffer. And at that point on Sunday the doctor said we’ve still got options, we can still treat him different ways. But, (by Monday) the doctor said, ‘You told me to tell you when there’s nothing left we can do, and this is it. There’s nothing left we can do except to make him comfortable and the decision is left up to you.’ ”
With all the information they had, the McCrays decided to take Ash off the machines.
“We talked to him for a little while,” A.C. said as tears welled up in his eyes. “It was about noon. And the doctors said, ‘We’ll go ahead and pull the (plugs).’ They (unhooked) all the machines except for his pain medicine. They wrapped him up and handed him to my wife. Before they (disconnected life support) they said it should be a matter of minutes and then he’d be gone. Fifteen minutes later, he was still fighting. His heart rate wasn’t steady but it was going.”
The doctor told the McCrays he never saw anything like it before. Ash should have passed away by then.
“I looked at him. I said, ‘Ash, I know you can see Jesus. I know you’re worried about Mommy and Daddy, but what you need to do is just run to Jesus. Jump into his arms. It’s OK. Mommy and Daddy will be OK. You don’t need to worry about us. And at that very moment I finished the sentence, the kid who had no brain function; he should have for all intents and purposes died 15 minutes before that; opened his eyes and looked at me. He smiled and he died,” A.C. said.
“That was probably the worst day of our lives.”
When they got home that day, A.C. collapsed. His brother, standing behind him, caught him in his arms.
They got through it, but Ash’s funeral was the second toughest day of A.C.’s life. A.C. was allowed to seal off Ash’s casket. He carried him to and from the hearse and lowered him into the ground.
“No parent should ever have to do that to their kid. But through it all, as terrible as it was, the doctors and the nurses – everybody at Riley – were still there for us,” A.C. said.
After Ash died, the doctor told A.C. he made the right choice. The doctor and rest of the staff were just as upset as the McCrays were.
“They don’t like to see the kids go,” A.C. said. “It affected everyone even to the lower level at Riley.”
He added, “I wish that was the end of our Riley story, but it’s not. At that point I said the same thing in my head: Boy, I am glad we’re done with Riley except for the minor appointments for our other son.”
Erik
A.C. started working at Lake City Rock 107.3 WRSW in 2011 as a board operator.
In 2012, the McCrays found out about Riley Radio Days, which was really exciting for them, though they were still hesitant about sharing their story because it was hard to relive it.
“Everyone grieves differently. And sharing the story, to me, was not something I had thought of. I was like, ‘This is our personal stuff. No one cares about our child who didn’t make it.’ At least that’s what I thought of in my head,” A.C. said.
Erin came in to help with Riley Radio Days, and the McCrays ended up sharing their story on the radio. Erin was more talkative that first year then A.C. was.
“It was strangely cathartic,” he said, though he didn’t understand it.
In 2013, A.C. was working nights at WRSW. They asked him to come in and host the midday show for Riley Radio Days because of his experience. That threw him off a little bit. He was still nervous about sharing his family’s story and hearing other families’ stories.
Riley Radio Days raised $53,000 last year. He started understanding why sharing his story was important and why people cared.
A week to the day after saying on the radio that he was glad they were done with trips to Riley, Shawn had a seizure and was taken instantly to Riley. They found out he had a seizure disorder on top of everything else, probably caused by the placement of the shunt.
After a few months of going to and from Riley and getting everything figured out there, A.C. figured again he was done with Riley except for the regular appointments.
Their oldest son, Erik, had just been started on ADHD medicine. Through his medicine, the doctors were able to determine that his blood pressure had raised and Erik had a problem, so he had to go to Riley.
“I remember when they found that out, I just went into the panic mode because all I heard the doctor say was ‘possible heart problem,’ ‘needs to go to Riley,’ ‘may have to have surgery,’” A.C. said.
After everything else they went through, A.C was just a mess.
He went to go see Mike Bergen, one of the founders of the Kosciusko County Riley Kids Fund, and told him he needed financial help. Bergen gave him the number for the social worker at the Health Center in the K21 Health Pavilion who can access the Riley Fund.
He met with Laura Cooper, the social worker.
“Never once was it, ‘Well, you need help, I’m better than you.’ She was right there on my level saying, ‘You need help, we’re going to help you and we’re going to make sure you’re able to be there to make sure your son gets the treatment he needs to get better,’” A.C. said.
The help provided the McCrays a way to get down to Riley. Once down there, the hospital determined Erik had a heart disease. His blood vessels were narrowing so he wasn’t getting blood to the lower parts of his body. He did have blood vessels branch out so he was able to get along as long as he had. They had to operate. If that operation didn’t work out, Erik would need a full bypass.
Date for the surgery was set for the end of July 2013.
“His surgeon was the same surgeon Ash had. He remembered exactly who we are. All the doctors who had dealt with Ash, Erik had quite a few of the same doctors and they all remembered us,” A.C. said.
Erik’s surgery was a success. His blood vessels had branched out enough that it all worked out well. Full recovery was expected.
They went back down to Riley Friday. They were worried about his heart valve, which was malformed, but otherwise Erik was going to be OK. The valve wasn’t causing any problems, and they didn’t expect it would.
Getting Involved
A.C. originally didn’t see a point in telling his family’s story.
It was because of Lake City Rock 107.3 WRSW’s Riley Radio Days that A.C. started talking about their Riley experience and began to understand how it affected others.
The Kosciusko County Riley Kids Fund, held at the Kosciusko County Community Foundation, was founded by Alan Alderfer and Mike Bergen because they recognized need among the families of Kosciusko County whose children are treated at the Riley Hospital for Children.
Bergen said when A.C. began working at the radio station, they didn’t know each other.
“We came in the very first day and there’s this lady kind of hanging around and came up to me and said, ‘We love Riley. If there’s anything we can do to help, let us know.’ I said thank you very much and I didn’t know who it was,” Bergen said. It was Erin, who had specifically came in to help with the radiothon.
Erin and Bergen talked for a little bit and she filled him in on Ash’s story. A.C and Erin ended up telling their story on the air.
“To me it was the most moving story of both days. Since then, obviously A.C. has become an integral part of the radio station and participated in last year’s radiothon, and A.C. and Erin are going to tell their story again this year on Thursday,” Bergen said. “Just a wonderful family and a very moving story.
Stephanie Overbey, Kosciusko County Community Foundation associate director, said the McCrays have been able to benefit from the Riley Kids Fund.
She said the fund does two things. It supports the actual hospice, and also provides financial relief to families of children served at Riley so the stay at Riley isn’t so financially taxing on them.
“Any time a family has a very ill child, it’s a financial disaster. It’s the least of their worries. But the reality is there’s some things insurance doesn’t cover, if you have it. That’s what the fund is there for,” Overbey said.
Both Alderfer and Bergen have children who were served by Riley. While the financial hardship wasn’t as great for them because of their jobs and resources, Overbey stated, they saw many families who literally had nothing left.
“This (fund) provides some cushion for those families,” she said.
“Obviously, this is a fundraising event where we raise money for the fund. But what’s important is that we want to get the word out that help is available if they need it because that’s the other half of this. We can have all the resources in the world but if people don’t know that they’re there then it doesn’t do people any good,” Bergen said.
Families that need help from the K.C. Riley Kids Fund can contact the social worker, Laura Cooper, at the Help Center, located in the K21 Health Pavilion. She helps families access the fund, which is administered by the Kosciusko County Community Foundation. The Help Center number is 574-372-3500.
Thursday and Friday the public has a chance to make a difference in the lives of families in Kosciusko County by calling 574-268-HOPE (4763) or by donating at www.1073wrsw.com/Events/RileyRadioDays2014.aspx
Have a news tip? Email [email protected] or Call/Text 360-922-3092