Keep Swimming Foundation is pleased to share the stories of five families who received a combined $17,000 in Keep Swimming Foundation grants between May 2021 and December 2021.
Keep Swimming Foundation chose these families after reviewing dozens of applications throughout 2021 with the goal of providing financial relief to the most deserving families who faced true financial hardship due to a long-term inpatient hospitalization.
Family #1 – Golden Valley, ND – Recipients of a $7,500 Grant
After being prescribed antibiotics to treat an infection, this family’s father/husband went into multi-organ failure. He was airlifted by helicopter from their small North Dakota town to a hospital in Minnesota. The patient’s wife accrued over $5,000 in hotel bills throughout a multi-month hospitalization, which involved an extended period in which the patient was placed on a ventilator.
This Keep Swimming Foundation grant was provided to assure the patient’s wife could afford her hotel debt while also covering meal and cab expenses when she was commuting to the hospital.
Family #2 – Chicago, IL – Recipients of a $4,000 Grant
The family of this baby girl spent over two months in the hospital with their daughter who had received a complicated small bowel transplant. The family was routinely spending nearly $100 per day to park their car so that they could spend the entire day with their daughter before returning home to sleep. In addition to the cost of bedside meals, the family was burdened with dozens of additional tanks of gas each month as they traveled daily between the suburbs of Chicago and the city hospital.
This Keep Swimming Foundation grant aided the family in paying down large amounts of credit card debt, which was incurred solely to be bedside with their daughter in her journey to wellness.
Family #3 – Grand Rapids, MI – Recipients of a $3,500 Grant
An infant was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan who soon developed an infection, which required the aid of a far more specialized institution. The child was transported to a hospital in St. Paul, Minnesota (three hours from the family’s home) where he required close supervision, a shunt to be placed in his head, and IV antibiotics for 28 consecutive days.
This Keep Swimming Foundation grant aided the family in numerous submitted expenses from their 28 day hospitalization, including lodging expenses and bedside meals.
Family #4 – South Lake Tahoe, CA – Recipients of a $1,500 Grant
The mother of this California family received the phone call with the great news that she would be the recipient of a matching pair of lungs. The family had saved for their extended trip for several years knowing that when the call came, they would need to travel across the state of California to be with their mother for many weeks after her lung transplant. Unfortunately, weeks prior to receiving the call for her transplant, the family was forced to evacuate their home due to a nearby wildfire. This caused them to utilize a great deal of the saved money they had planned to use for their mother’s hospitalization, thus putting the family of four in great debt as they attempted to navigate the expensive costs of the city in which the hospital was located.
This Keep Swimming Foundation grant will aid the family in paying off some of the debt they took on but had previously planned for.
Family #5 – Concord, CA – Recipients of a $500 Grant
Another family from California whose loved one also received a lung transplant spent six weeks in the hospital. Throughout their hospitalization, the family accrued a great deal of debt pertaining to their inpatient hospital stay. The vast majority of their submitted debt was in regards to an AirBnB the family rented throughout their stay.
This Keep Swimming Foundation grant will help the family reduce the total amount of debt they are facing post-hospitalization.
Keep Swimming Foundation would like to thank its donors for making these grants possible. The foundation plans to select and announce the next group of Keep Swimming Foundation grant recipients in the spring of 2022.