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Scott and Crystal Bennett hold their son Kyle.
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Kyle get a piggy back ride from a friend at the bazaar
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Community opens heart to mend sick 4-year-old’s heart
First surgery for Kyle Bennett set for Aug. 31
Family members poured out their hearts this weekend to save the heart of a young boy.
Loved ones held a bazaar on Saturday and Sunday to raise money to help save the life of 4-year-old Kyle Bennett.
“Everything clicked in place and we had a great sale,” said his mother, Crystal Bennett, 36.
The outdoor bazaar was held at the Knights of Columbus, which donated its Pine Township facility to the cause.
“If it wasn’t for the Knights, this wouldn’t have happened,” said Donnie Null, Kyle’s grandma, of Grove City.
She and other family camped out in a tent for two nights to keep watch over the sale items.
Rev. Mark Hoffman, pastor of Church of the Beloved Disciple, left the Knights facility open for the family to have restrooms to use during the night.
The Catholic organizations “couldn’t have been nicer to us,” Null said.
The Knights’ building was being renovated or the family could have used it for the sale, “but I don’t think it would have been big enough,” she added.
Numerous individuals and businesses donated items for the bazaar. Shoppers could buy all types of things, like books, jewelry, furniture, appliances, toys, bikes, clothes and baby items. There was a Chinese auction and grab-bag items.
“There was probably a few hundred people that went through,” Mrs. Bennett said. The weather was perfect, without rain until “the last day cleaning up,” she added.
Mrs. Bennett deposited just over $4,700 from the sale into an account an Northwest Savings Bank in her son’s name.
At birth, Kyle was diagnosed with tetralogy of fallot with pulmonary atresia, a severe heart defect that makes it difficult for him to create or pump oxygenated blood.
Within an hour of being born, he was air-lifted to Children’s Hospital in Pittsburgh, where he spent the first three weeks of his life being tested and stabilized.
Since, he’s had four open-heart surgeries and seven heart catheterizations involving ballooning and cutting his arteries. Recently, Kyle had surgery for a pacemaker to keep his abnormal heart rhythms under control.
However, the adorable blonde is outgrowing his heart, and his particular problems would give him a slim chance of surviving a heart and lung transplant.
After Children’s in Pittsburgh exhausted its medical options with Kyle, the Bennetts found pediatric heart specialist, Dr. V. Mohan Reddy, Stanford, Calif.
Reddy plans to perform two specialized surgeries on Kyle at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital at Stanford in Palo Alto, with high hopes of saving the boy and giving him a fairly normal life.
Kyle’s first surgery is set for Aug. 31, to repair arteries going to his lungs.
After three to six months of recuperation, a second surgery will do a full repair of his heart.
Pennsylvania and California are working out the Bennetts’ insurance to pay for the surgeries, which will cost over $100,000 apiece.
“So far, the two states have agreed to work with each other,” Mrs. Bennett said.
Both sides are going over figures to come up with what will be covered and what the Bennetts will have to cover themselves.
“Nothing is set in stone yet,” she added, although Pennsylvania is expected to cover only 50 percent of the costs.
“It will take a long time to get the exact numbers,” Mrs. Bennett said.
In addition to the $200,000-plus, there will be a minimum 5-week stay in California for each procedure.
Mrs. Bennett and Kyle will go alone, while her husband Scott Keith Bennett, 39, stays here to work and take care of their 14-year old son.
The family is from Carlton, Pa. They also have an 18-year-old daughter in college, who also has a child.
Kyle and his mom are set to leave for California Aug. 19, to settle in and prepare for the first surgery.
In the meantime, Mom, Dad and the two boys are going on a much-needed vacation to California on July 3.
The Make-a-Wish Foundation has awarded Kyle a trip Sea World and Legoland, both in San Diego; and the San Diego Zoo and Wild Animal Park.
It will be Kyle’s “first time away anywhere except for Pittsburgh. It’ll be exciting,” his mom said.
Grandma Null hopes to plan another fundraiser this month for Kyle; a backyard carnival.
“We want to keep his name and face out there,” Null said.
The carnival idea came from Kyle’s 5-year-old cousin, Sierra Mae Brown.
“She said, ‘I want to help save Kyle, too,’” Null said.
Mrs. Bennett hopes the fundraisers will be enough.
“We’re in a scramble to come up with as much (deposit) money as we can,” she said. “We don’t want to be short or they’ll cancel the surgery.”
The fundraiser at the Knights brought a lot of newspaper and radio press, although many saw it just passing by while driving on Route 208.
“We would like to thank everybody that donated to the sale and helped out for the sale, and those who showed up,” Mrs. Bennett said. “It turned out very well.”
Donations can be made for Kyle at any Northwest Savings Bank under “Kyle S. Bennett, Carlton.” Pick up a copy of this article at Allied News, 201A Erie St., Grove City. Publish date July 1, 2009.
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