Bennett's Memorial Fund in Support of ICU Families
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In celebration of Bennett's 2nd birthday and memory of his much-too-short-but-mighty life, we ask you to donate to a lasting legacy of supporting families living the ICU life. Our goal is to start an endowment to assist families traveling to be with their little ones to help with things like gas, lodging, groceries and eating out. It will also be used to support the Child Life teams in the gracious services they provide.
Bennett was born November 19, 2020 and fought every minute of his 248 days. July 25, 2021 was his last day with us. As many of you know, Bennett lived in 4 different ICUs - in both the NICU (Neonatal Intensive Care Unit) and PICU (Pediatric Intensive Care Unit) at Renown in Reno, NV and UC Davis Medical Center in Sacramento, CA. Living with an infant in the hospital is traumatic in itself. Add traveling to a hospital and living out-of-town or out-of-state while caring for your baby in the ICU - life feels insurmountable. But we did it - and other families are doing the same thing every day.
Renown's NICU transport team brings in babies within a 200-mile radius. UC Davis NICU serves 33 counties stretching from Central California to the Oregon and Nevada borders. Some families may travel even further for the specialized care these hospitals provide. That is a LOT of families living away from home just to be near their child with critical medical needs.
We were extremely fortunate to have resources to travel back and forth, an average of 150 miles each way between our home and UC Davis Medical Center. Between January and July 2021, we estimate we drove over 11,000 miles to be with Bennett. We lived for about 6 months in our travel trailer, in the full hook-up RV spots behind the Kiwanis House. We also had unending support from friends and family and were able to work remotely.
For some families, the expenses and logistics of traveling so far or living near an out-of-town hospital just aren't feasible. One family had a baby in the NICU, right next to Bennett. Home was about 3 hours away and they could only travel on the weekends to spend time with their baby. The father worked an hourly job and could not afford to take time off. Mom wasn't able to stay nearby. They relished every minute they spent with their son on the weekends.
The other support we received was from the Child Life team at both Renown and UC Davis. These are amazing specialists who support the entire family, including the baby or child, their siblings, and parents. They provide the “fun” things babies are supposed to have in life. Bennett had a little sound machine next to his bed and listened to the rain or a stream to cover the noise of constant alarms. They brought in a baby swing which he was able to enjoy a few times. And, they took the most amazing and perfect footprints on a large framed print, which they also shrunk down and made into necklaces. This is one of my most treasured gifts from the Child Life team. As we prepared to say goodbye to Bennett, they helped us gather every memory possible – even recording Bennett’s heartbeat into a little stuffed teddy bear.
Please share the link to this GoFundMe widely. We have big goals for making life just a little bit easy for other families in memory of Bennett. THANK YOU!
After you have made your generous donation, here is another little window into our lives:
In addition to all of the above, we were also fighting medical bills for months on end. We recently worked with the most compassionate journalist from Kaiser Health News, Lauren Weber, who wrote a beautiful piece about Bennett and two other families in similar situations. It was featured on NPR as an article, on the news show All Things Considered, and in more depth on the Consider This podcast. The article was covered locally in the Nevada Independent, Nevada Current, and This is Reno.
NPR Article:
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2022/09/22/1121612539/baby-high-medical-bills-nicu-heartbreak
NPR Podcast:
Organizer
Crissa Markow
Organizer
Reno, NV