Bike for Hope: Bike Run to raise money for local family
Courtesy of Nicole Finney
UPMC Children’s gives kids Beads of Courage for every milestone, and each color is symbolic of a hospital stay, blood draw or other procedure. Here, Nicole Finney holds her daughter Hope’s beads above the sleeping girl.
Courtesy of Nicole Finney
Hope Finney, who celebrated her first birthday June 29, is a NICU Warrior. Finney sustained a birth injury and spent her first 98 days of life in the UPMC Children’s neonatal intensive care unit, and family friends are hosting a bike run Saturday to raise money for the Finney’s hospital bills.
Folks are invited to Bike for Hope this Saturday, July 16, to raise money for 1-year-old Hope Finney, who was diagnosed with stage three chronic kidney disease and divides her time between home and Children’s Hospital.
“I never thought in a million years I would be this parent going through this,” said Nicole Finney, of Prosperity. “That little girl, she deserves the world. She fought her whole first year of life to be here. I had doctors telling me, we don’t know the lifespan of your daughter. You might have to let her go. That was so hard to take in. She still continues to fight.”
Finney said after losing her first child to miscarriage at 12 weeks, she and her husband Robert were extra careful while pregnant with Hope Elizabeth Rose. During birth, Hope sustained an injury and was flown to UPMC Children’s Hospital, where she spent her first 98 days in the neonatal intensive care unit.
“She had liver failure,” said Finney. “She was having a lot of seizures. She had a ventilator … blood transfusions. It’s scary.”
Though Hope takes eight medications daily and is on a feeding tube, you’d never to know to look at her that the little girl needs a kidney transplant.
That’s what the “Hope Finney Bike Run” is raising funds for: The future transplant (Hope needs to gain about five pounds before that happens), and hospital bills. The Finneys trek to Children’s biweekly for lab tests, and in May, Hope spent three weeks in the hospital for dehydration and to monitor her kidneys.
Nicole Finney’s friends Megan Conley and Amy Miller organized the ride and started a GoFundMe as a surprise for the family.
“What’s amazing to me is (Conley) has her family and I have my family, you kind of drift apart. All of a sudden, I’m sitting in the hospital in May and I see a post,” said Finney. “I was like, what is this? (She said) we want to help.”
Bike Run registration begins at 10 a.m. at the Washington American Legion. Cars and trucks are welcome to join in event, which stops at several American Legions before ending in Taylorstown. There will be a cash bar, 50/50 and a Chinese auction.
Finney said funds raised during the Bike Run and through GoFundMe will go in part to medical expenses, but she plans to donate some money to Children’s.
“Children’s Hospital is amazing. They saved her life,” said Finney. “That’s her second home.”
To contact Conley or donate to the Hope Finney GoFundMe, visit https://www.gofundme.com/f/xn9wa-help-for-hope.