Funding Letter for HBO
The following letter was sent to our local Knights of Columbus in April 2000. They agreed to organize a breakfast fundraiser for us. You could use this letter for other therapies as well.
Knights of Columbus
(Your town here)
Dear Sirs,
We are writing this letter because we are seeking help for a member of our family. Kyle was born April 6, 1993, full term and healthy. Kyle was our first child. Because he was full term and there were no complications during pregnancy or birth, we had no reason to suspect that there would be anything wrong with Kyle’s health or development.
We started noticing that Kyle did not use his right hand at around 3 months of age. He would keep it fisted and seemed to be unaware that is was a part of his body. We thought he would outgrow this. He seemed to be meeting all of his other milestones on time. We became concerned after Kyle did not start sitting unsupported until 9 months of age. This developmental milestone usually occurs at 6 months of age. Kyle had also started trying to use his right hand at 9 months and we noticed he could not control what he wanted to do with it.
After bringing this to the attention of our pediatrician we were referred to a pediatric neurologist. He diagnosed Kyle with right side hemiplegic cerebral palsy at 10 months of age. We were devastated and in shock. According to our neurologist, the brain damage had been caused in utero by a stroke that occurred for some unknown reason. So began our journey on the road to finding therapies and treatments that would help Kyle reach his fullest physical, emotional and educational potential.
Kyle is now 7 years old. Besides cerebral palsy, he also has a seizure disorder controlled by medication and an auditory processing deficit (His hearing is fine but he does not always process what he hears correctly.). Kyle is in the (Grade Level here) at (School Name Here). He loves school and his teacher (Name). Kyle receives physical and occupational therapies through the school to help him compensate for the spasticity(tightness) in his right arm/hand and leg/foot. He also is participating in therapeutic horseback riding and using threshold electrical stimulation. Both have helped improve his physical abilities.
Which brings us to the point of this letter. We have spent many late nights researching therapies and/or treatments for Kyle. We are currently having Kyle undergo Hyperbaric Oxygen Treatment. The premise of this therapy is that there is an area around a brain injury where the cells are not dead but lying dormant. With Hyperbaric Oxygen Treatment, the thought is that when you expose these dormant cells to high oxygen levels under pressure, this forces the oxygen into all bodily fluids and so gets the oxygen to more parts of the body. This helps to "wake up" the dormant cells, which then, in turn improves physical and mental function. It can reduce spasticy, decrease drooling, and improve speech, attention span, and cognitive processing. It can also decrease seizure activity. We are hoping it will help Kyle is this area so that we can take him off of seizure medication at some point. His neurologist feels that there is a good chance that Kyle will have to be medicated for life. All seizure medications have terrible side effects and we know that our best hope for taking Kyle off the medication is by using alternative therapies that have a possibility to help.
Hyperbaric Oxygen treatment is commonly used in conjunction with burn injuries, non-healing wounds and for diving accidents. It is FDA approved in these conditions, but not yet approved for use in children with brain injury. My husband and I have researched this very thoroughly, and even tried to find out if it would be covered through our insurance. It is not because of its FDA standing. There is no evidence of harm with this type of treatment, in some cases children have come home walking, even though they were unable to before.
Unfortunately, this treatment is very expensive. It is recommended that each child undergo at least 120 sessions. (This is a once in a lifetime type of treatment, it will either work forever or it won't work at all.) We should have 120 sessions completed by the middle of June, 2000. We hope these will be enough. If Kyle is still showing improvements, however, we will do an additional 40-80 treatments.
Each session is normally $100.00. So this brings us to $12,000.00. We also have to travel out of state to receive treatments and so have to pay for lodging for the 3 weeks we are there for Kyle to receive treatment. We have already paid for 80 treatments and received 75. We plan to return for more treatments at the end of May. It has become increasingly difficult to afford these treatments and the lodging expenses. While we are very fortunate that my husband makes a good salary, we also have two other children. I do not work outside of the home so that I can care for our children and for Kyle’s extra needs. We are wondering if there is anyway that your organization could set-up a benefit to enable Kyle to undergo this next set of treatments.
We are enclosing studies concerning the use of hyperbaric oxygen therapy, which are relevant to Kyle’s condition. We are also enclosing the notes from Kyle’s last visit to his pediatric orthopedist, which states that Kyle’s spasticity has been reduced after 35 hyperbaric oxygen treatments. Lastly, we are enclosing the improvements we, and our physical therapist, have seen to date, after 75 treatments.
We greatly appreciate your taking time to review our request. If you would like further information, please do not hesitate to contact us at our home XXX-XXXX.
Sincerely,
(YOUR NAMES HERE)