About Our Cause

Children's Miracle Network is a non-profit organization dedicated to saving and improving the lives of children by raising funds for children's hospitals across North America. Each year the 170 Children's Miracle Network hospitals provide the finest medical care, life-saving research and preventative education to help millions of kids overcome diseases and injuries of every kind. The 170 Children's Miracle Network hospitals are there 24 hours a day to help kids of every age and background overcome every imaginable disease and injury—from asthma and broken bones to cancer, heart defects, pediatric AIDS, muscular dystrophy and serious injuries. These children's hospitals are also on the front lines of preventing disease and injury through research, education and outreach programs that keep millions of kids out of the hospital each year. Locally, Children's Miracle Network Northeast Florida/Southeast Georgia benefits the pediatric programs at Shands Jacksonville and Wolfson Children's Hospital.

Christmas Eve night in 2007 the Wells family all gathered to open gifts. After supper was over some of the kids went for a ride on 4-wheelers. Soon after, news of an accident reached Pollie, Buddy's mother. Pollie and her husband, Darrel, soon discovered that their son had been thrown from a 4-wheeler and was in critical condition. He was airlifted to Shands Jacksonville where the doctor told the Wells that Buddy had suffered an injury to the left front side of the brain, 4 chipped vertebras in his neck, a broke collar bone, 2 broken ribs, and a punctured lung.

The pressure on his brain was rising and medication was not stopping it. The doctors explained that they were going to induce Buddy into a coma, to try and control the swelling. One of Buddy's day nurses discovered if she would keep him cool, his pressure would drop. Unfortunately, that could not help what came next. Buddy developed pneumonia in his injured lung. They inserted a tube into his chest and he needed to be rotated to keep the fluid from collecting in his chest. The problem was his brain pressure would rise every time he was moved. They had to keep him in a coma to maintain the brain pressure, but the longer he was under, the more problems he would have coming out.

On day 10, Buddy's pressure had started coming down and he was slowly taken off all the IVs. He was awake, but did not respond to anything. He had lost about 20 lbs and was not cognitive, but he was alive. It took Buddy's body nearly 6 days to fully come out of the coma. During this time he responded by moving a ball purchased by CMN for Child Life thus giving his family hope.

Buddy had spent Christmas and his birthday in Shands Jacksonville while in a coma that year. As a critical patient of the PICU, Buddy benefited from the Central Monitoring System purchased by Children's Miracle Network Funding. This $50,000 piece of equipment allowed the nurses to provide constant monitoring by having access of his medical stats at the nurses station as well as bedside. He spent the next 6 weeks at Brooks Rehabilitation. Today he is doing well.