A benefit dinner this weekend hopes to raise additional funds for special treatments needed by a nearly 3-year-old local girl.

Thursday, February 22, 2001

A benefit dinner this weekend hopes to raise additional funds for special treatments needed by a nearly 3-year-old local girl.

Kylie Beth Haney went to Florida last month to receive hyperbaric treatments for her cerebral palsy.

"We can see things that she’s doing," Kylie’s grandmother, Sue Bothun of Austin, said, adding that the tot now is rolling over and trying to talk.

Eight months after Kylie was born, she was diagnosed with cerebral palsy. Normally used to aid divers in overcoming decompression sickness, also called bends, the hyperbaric chamber that Kylie used in Florida was hoped to make her less spastic and bring greater success to therapy treatments.

Kylie’s parents, Kevin Haney and Lindsey Bothun, took their daughter to Ocean Medical Center in Lauderdale-By-The-Sea, Fla., last month for a total of 20 treatments over a two-week period.

Because insurance companies consider the treatment experimental, they don’t cover the cost of the sessions. The cost for the sessions last month was expected to reach $4,000.

The benefit dinner this weekend will be from 1 to 4 p.m. Saturday at the Mapleview Community Center. Food has been donated by Piggy Blues Bar-B-Que and Hy-Vee Food Store. The menu will include barbecue pork sandwiches, Sue Bothun said Wednesday.

While the treatments in Florida are showing a positive sign for the little girl, Sue Bothun said that a similar facility is under construction in Minneapolis. The facility is expected to open as early as April and will make it easier for treatments to be obtained closer to home.

"It’s been amazing," Sue Bothun said of the progress the family is seeing in Kylie Beth.

After hearing about the success of hyperbaric oxygen therapy conducted by Dr. Richard Neubauer on KAAL-TV’s morning news and reading about it in Exceptional Parent magazine, Lindsey Bothun and Haney contacted the Florida hospital. Neubauer has been treating patients with pressurized oxygen since 1972.

The procedure works by increasing the pressure of the oxygen, thereby forcing it into the body’s tissues. Expectations are that each procedure will improve oxygen uptake in the brain. Cerebral palsy is caused by a lack of oxygen during or immediately after birth.

In addition to the $4,000 cost of the already obtained treatments, an additional $2,000 is charged to the family for two single-photon emission computerized tomography scans that document pre- and post-oxygenation brain activity. Bothun and Haney also need additional funds for their travel expenses to Florida.

In order to raise the money needed, Kylie’s great-uncle, Jim McGee, has donated a 1940 International truck for a raffle. Sponsors for the raffle are Cedar River Longbeards and the Austin chapter of the National Wild Turkey Federation.

Each raffle ticket costs $10 and can be purchased from Bothun and Haney family members, as well as at Nicol’s Texaco on Main Street North. The raffle will take place at the Holiday Inn on March 3. Anyone with questions about the raffle or a desire to buy a ticket can call Vaughn Bothun, Lindsey Bothun’s father, at 433-9160.