Kristyn Allen’s twin daughters flourishing “all thanks to CP”
BROWN COUNTY, Wis. (WBAY) - This weekend marks a special time for the community with the 67th annual CP Telethon, the longest running local telethon in the country, taking place March 6 and 7.
Not only is the community able to financially support CP to keep programs and therapy running, you get to see exactly how it is helping so many local families.
That includes one of our own here at WBAY.
The therapists at CP have changed not just a child’s life but everyone around her.
“To not know what would happen... if she would talk normally, if she would walk, if she would eat, all these things... and they happened,” says Kristyn Allen, tearing up. “I mean... there’s not much else you can say.”
But Action 2 News This Morning reporter Kristyn Allen has so much more to say, though actions may speak louder than words to show the miracles she’s seen in her twin daughters, who turned two just before Christmas.
“It’s so crazy to think of where they were, even just a year ago, when that was good to me then. And to be where they are now is amazing,” she says, smiling.
Kristyn and her husband, Greg, have courageously shared their tears and smiles with us since their twin daughters, Braelyn and Brielle, both became critically ill with respiratory viruses when they were just six weeks old.
Braelyn began to struggle and needed an advanced form of life support, called ECMO, to circulate her blood and give her a fighting chance.
Doctors weren’t sure she could survive the two-hour ambulance ride to Milwaukee to undergo the very risky treatment.
But Braelyn is a fighter.
She came home with a feeding tube and a lot of medications in a few months later, in April of 2019.
Less than a year later, she pulled through open heart surgery like a champ. The hole in her heart is now fully repaired.
Each day spent with the twins and their oldest daughter, Bailey, have Greg and Kristyn counting their blessings.
“For her to be where she is is truly amazing, and it wouldn’t be without the help of CP,” says Kristyn.
Being able to jump in a bounce house, chatter away with her dolls and even eat are all huge accomplishments the family has seen achieved, they say, because a team of therapists from CP have been alongside the family the whole time.
“CP is just an amazing place, and the therapists are so skilled and so talented and dedicated to what they do,” says Kristyn. “Laurie is truly a part of our family. Michelle is her speech therapist; she’s truly a part of our family.”
They’ve witnessed a whole new level of dedication during the pandemic, first figuring out tele-therapy, and then in-home therapy.
“You can’t control the environment quite as much because it’s not your environment, and you just have to kind of go with the flow a little bit more, and I’m okay with that,” says occupational therapist Laurie Anderson, during one of her in-home therapy sessions with Braelyn.
Braelyn is flourishing because she was able to keep that physical, occupational, feeding and speech therapy going without missing a beat.
She’ll have her feeding tube removed soon, too, years earlier than Kristyn expected.
“It’s been great to see Braelyn enjoying food, and from the beginning you don’t know if or when it’s going to happen,” says speech language pathologist Michelle Joslin. “It was amazing to see how quickly it was for her.”
Kristyn credits it all to CP.
“That’s why I tell the story, to bring others hope, and my hope is that one day, someone else walks through those doors with a bunch of uncertainty ahead of them, and they can say, well, we had this patient, Braelyn, and she went through all those things and she turned out okay,” says Kristyn.
CLICK HERE for information about the CP Telethon or to make a donation. You can watch the CP Telethon live on WBAY-TV 2 and online at wbay.com/livestream.
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